Re: How does "alias ethX drivername" in modules.conf work?

[Paul Gortmaker]

Riley Williams wrote:

> One of my systems has SIX ethernet cards, these being three ISA and
> two PCI NE2000 clones and a DEC Tulip. Here's the relevant section of
> modules.conf on the system in question:
> 
>  Q> alias eth0 ne
>  Q> options eth0 io=0x340
>  Q> alias eth1 ne
>  Q> options eth1 io=0x320
>  Q> alias eth2 ne
>  Q> options eth2 io=0x2c0
>  Q> alias eth3 ne2k-pci
>  Q> alias eth4 ne2k-pci
>  Q> alias eth5 tulip

You have six drivers loaded, when you only need three (i.e.
io=0x340,0x320,0x2c0 for ne options etc. etc).  So you end
up wasting some memory, and a worse icache behaviour as well.
(the latter is probably a non-issue if you are happy with ISA)

Paul.