[Techtalk] 2.4.16 kernel not loading nic module at boot and sound problems

[Rachel Andrew]

Hi

I seem to be fated to have nic problems with this machine...

After getting Debian (Potato) finally installed, I did a dist-upgrade to 
testing, installed x and KDE. I have a sound card on this machine (a first 
for me with Linux) and USB so I downloaded the kernel source for 2.4.16 (I 
had a 2.2 kernel to start with), compiled it and it booted first time with 
no problems other than the modules didn't load.

I can get the network back up again by doing

modprobe 8139too
/etc/init.d/networking restart

and I added to
/etc/modutils/aliases

alias eth0 8139too

which I thought would bring it up on boot, but it doesn't seem to. I think 
I'm lacking in understanding really of how these kernel modules actually 
work. My last Linux box had so little in it that there wasn't much to get 
working. I still haven't got sound working at all. I have a SB 128 PCI and 
I requested the modules from the kernel which seem to be there - uart401, 
sb, sb_lib although, once again, they don't start up on boot. starting them 
with modprobe doesn't get the sound card working however so I'm not too 
sure where I need to look now.

Rachel