I do not understand kernel modules

[Gardner Bell]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 12:55:32AM +0100 Ramiro Aceves wrote:
> Jorn Argelo wrote:
> >On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:38:54 +0100, Ramiro Aceves wrote
> >
> >>Hello friends.
> >>
> >>I am a FreeBSD newbie, I am going to ask you a question that I have not
> >>been able to solve reading the manual. I am using 5.3 release. I have
> >>compiled a custom kernel in my old pentium 75 MHz machine to include 
> >>the driver for my sound card. I added the following lines to the kernel
> >>config file
> >>
> >>device sound
> >>device "snd_es137x"
> >>
> >>and compiled the kernel perfectly. (long time.... ;-)  )
> >>
> >>But there is something that I do not understand well. When I look at 
> >>the contents of /boot/kernel/ directory, I found that there are 
> >>kernel sound modules *.ko for every sound card the kernel supports. 
> >>Should not there be my sound card module alone? Does It mean that 
> >>you have to compile all the stuff, even if you are going to use only 
> >>one kind of sound card? Am I missing something?
> >
> >
> >Your sound card has been build into the kernel itself (which is 
> >/boot/kernel/
> >kernel AFAIK). The *.ko are kernel modules, which you can load using the 
> >kldload command. So in case you get a new sound card, find out what driver 
> >it supports and you can use kldload <yourdriver>.ko to get support for 
> >your sound card without recompiling your kernel.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, I understand now. The problem is that my old pentium machine takes 
> very long time to compile all the modules even if I am not going to use 
> them. I would like to compile only the modules I use, to reduce 
> compiling time. Is that possible?
> 
Refer to the option MODULES_OVERRIDE in man make.conf(5) if you wish
to only compile certain modules.

Gardner