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

[Paul Gortmaker]

Riley Williams wrote:

> 
>  > 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.
> 
> Are you sure of this? My understanding (both from reading the code and
> from what others I respect have said) is that it is impossible to load
> any given module more than once, so the above will result in one copy
> each of the ne, ne2k-pci and tulip drivers being loaded.

Here is an example of what I was talking about:

# insmod wd -o wd0 io=0x280 irq=10
# insmod wd -o wd1 io=0x680 irq=3
# insmod wd -o wd2 io=0xa80 irq=4
# insmod wd -o wd3 io=0xe80 irq=9
# cat /proc/modules
wd3                2            0
wd2                2            0
wd1                2            0
wd0                2            0
8390               2    [wd3 wd2 wd1 wd0]      0
# rmmod wd3 wd2 wd1 wd0
#
# insmod wd io=0x280,0x680,0xa80,0xe80 irq=10,3,4,9
# cat /proc/modules
wd                 2		0
8390               2	[wd]	0
#

The 1st way (4 copies of the driver present) will work, but is not
as efficient as the 2nd way (one copy present).

[Don't look too hard at the I/O addresses or you will realize there was 
only one card in this particular machine anyway...]

Paul.