10.2 Do you have the proper device driver module?

Now that you have identified the device, the next question is ”does the kernel know how to use it?”

Associating a device with its driver can be difficult. The command discover can be quite useful.

The following command is particularly useful:

You should pay attention to the line that specifies the network interface card, and see if it is associated with a module. If so, the kernel has successfully recognized the device and loaded the proper module. If not, you can explore a few options.

For Redhat/Fedora, an equivalent program is kudzu. It maintains a file at /etc/sysconfig/hwconf that describes the devices in the system and how they are configured. It can also help to configure the file /etc/modules.conf.

Depending on the distribution, there is usually a manual method to discover a device and load its module.

The Debian distribution (and most of its derivatives) use a command line utility modconf. One can interactively use this utility program to attempt to load modules.

If all fails, a system administrator can research the proper module to load, and edit /etc/modules.conf to include the proper module. If this needs to be done, please first read the manual page of modules.conf first, as it describes everything (just about) that is needed to utilize that file.