Loadable Modules and Hardware Inventory

Loadable Modules and Hardware Inventory

Many device drivers add to the hardware inventory in their init or edtinit routines. If a driver is a dynamically loadable driver and is auto-registered, it will not show up in the hardware inventory until the driver has been loaded on the first open of the corresponding device. If a clean install or a diskless install is done, a /dev entry will not be created by MAKEDEV for such a driver, since it does not appear in the hardware inventory. If this situation arises, the D master.d flag can be used to indicate that the driver should be loaded, then unloaded, by autoconfig. If the R master.d flag, which indicates that the driver should be auto-registered, is also used, then the driver will be auto-registered as usual. A startup script can then be added to run MAKEDEV after autoconfig, if necessary. For an example, see the startup script in /etc/init.d/chkdev.