[arch-dev-public] kmod-3 in [testing]

[Dan McGee]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 6:40 PM, Dave Reisner <d at falconindy.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I've just dropped kmod-3 into testing as a replacement for
> module-init-tools. This is still a young project, but it has a lot of
> support from active people, and I (as well as Tom) have been working
> closely with upstream to flesh out and fix bugs.
>
> For the most part, you should not notice any difference. kmod was
> designed as a drop-in replacement for m-i-t, and all the binaries should
> exist with the (mostly) the same options. Whenever possible, options or
> features marked deprecated in m-i-t were removed, such as:
>
> - parsing of depmod/modprobe config for files not ending in .conf
> - modprobe's -l, --list options
>
> IMPORTANT: In line with the first change, it needs to be pointed out
> that we will no longer package /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf. This means
> that if you wrote to that file, it will be .pacsave'd on removal of
> m-i-t and you must rename it. We will continue to ship what used to be
> called /etc/depmod.d/depmod.conf, but rename it /lib/depmod.d/search.conf.
> This will be a read only file -- users should put their own tweaks in
> /etc/depmod.d.
>
> One other thing you might notice is that kmod doesn't currently include
> man pages. I don't consider this a loss -- the m-i-t manpages did not
> provide full coverage, nor did the command line help. kmod's binaries
> all currently have full coverage of options via -h, --help.
>
> Lastly, there's an accompanying mkinitcpio update to account for some
> extra verbosity of kmod's modprobe and depmod tools. You do *not* need
> to regenerate your initramfs images unless you feel so inclined.
>
> Have fun!

Or don't. Not to rain on Dave's parade (this isn't his fault), but
unless you want to sit at your initrd shell for a half hour
un-breaking stuff, I'd recommend steering clear of this package and
sticking with the old but proven module-init-tools. This package
causes modprobe when called by udev to randomly not load modules or
something; first noticable with uhci_hcd and my mouse (trivial), later
with ahci on boot (not cool, not having disk drives).

**Tip**: if you get screwed, call `udevadm trigger` a few times, it
seems to knock some sense into the system. You can do this in the
initrd environment too.

-Dan