[wplug] How does Debian connect devices to modules?

Eric Cooper ecc at cmu.edu
Sat Jul 9 21:56:06 EDT 2005


On Sat, Jul 09, 2005 at 07:54:56PM -0400, Rick Reynolds wrote:
> My laptop has a wireless and a wired interface.  I think I'm using 
> eth1394 as the module for the wired interface (eth0) and I know I'm 
> using prism54 for the wireless (eth1).
> 
> Where or how does Debian map the device to the module?  How does it know 
> to connect eth0 to eth1394 and eth1 to prism54?

(Probably not eth1394 -- I think that's Ethernet over Firewire.)  You
can look at /var/log/syslog or run dmesg to see which driver created
which network device.  Unless you tell it otherwise, the first network
driver to load will grab eth0, the next one eth1, etc.  And on Debian
with a modular kernel, the drivers will be loaded by the hotplug
system in somewhat unpredictable order, in my experience.

One way to control it is to create a file in /etc/modprobe.d/, say
"local", with lines like
         # wired Ethernet driver
	 alias eth0 eepro100
         # wireless 802.11b driver
         alias eth1 ipw2100

You can probably also tell hotplug somehow, but I don't have much
experience with that.

-- 
Eric Cooper             e c c @ c m u . e d u


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