Autoloading NVdriver

[ricur]

Hi. I have read all of the posts on here about loading the NVDrive on bootup, but still have no luck. Can anyone offer me any advice as to how exactly, I can make it auto load the NVDriver on boot up ?

Thanks
Richard

[Thunderbird]

A lot of distributions (RH, Mandrake ..) use the file /etc/modules.conf or conf.modules.
To that file you can add a line:
alias char-major-195 NVdriver

or you can put a line "modprobe NVdriver" in one of the system startup scripts.

If you compiled your own kernel make sure it supports loadable modules.

[ricur]

I have already added that line to /etc/modules.conf, but it doesnt seem to do anything (at least not for me).

I am sure that my kernel uses modules as I compiled the sound to be a module, and that is working now... there are several entries in the modules.conf.

I think I will add the line to the startup script (for now) until I find a better solution.

Thanks
Richard

[bwkaz]

If your distro uses devfs and devfsd, then adding the alias for char-major-195 won't help. The alias has to be for /dev/nvidia* instead.

A request can't come in to the kernel on a character device with major 195 unless that device already exists. With devfs, the device isn't created until the module actually loads, so you get a catch-22. But most of the time, devfs is set so that any access to a file under /dev tries to modprobe that filename (which won't be a module, but you can still alias to it). So if you add the alias, it should work.

Note that Mandrake ever since at least 8.1 is the only distribution that I know for sure uses devfs. RedHat might now, but I'm not sure. To check, if almost everything under /dev is a device file (shows up in yellow on the default color ls output), then you're not running it; ignore me. If most stuff comes up as a symlink (cyan in the default color ls output), then you're running devfs, try this.