How to force load "conflicting" driver at boot?

[fbr]

I'm adding a Linux box to my home network and I run into a compatibility issue between gentoo current release and network driver I'm using.

I use a Diamond HomeFree HomePNA 2.0 PCI card based on Broadcom chip. The Linux driver for this chip is made available by Linksys at ftp://ftp.linksys.com/beta/linux_hpna2_0_v2_34_0_2.exe. The driver is half source code/half pre-compiled binaries. I I followed the included instructions to make the driver module (il.o).

The trouble is that the binaries are compiled with v. 2.* complier. As a result "modprobe" refuses to load the driver with error message that sounds something like "The module you are trying to load is compiled with a gcc version 2 compiler, while the kernel you are running is compiled with a gcc version 3 compiler."

If I force load the driver (il.o) with "insmod -f il" command (that gives the same warning) and then bring up eth0 with "ifconfing blah blah", the network starts to work without a glitch.

Here's my problem: Although I configured the eth0 to start at the boot time with il.o driver, the system refuses to load it at boot time due to above problem.

I'm not that familiar with Linux boot process so I'm looking for an advice on how should I modify boot scripts to ignore the warnings and force load that particular driver and bring the eth0 up.

Here's some details of my setup

Linux 2.4.25-gentoo
Gentoo 2004.2 distro for AMD Athlon XP

Fedor.

[NeddySeagoon]

fbr,

There isn't a tidy answer to this that I'm aware of. You need to automate what you do manually.

Edit /etc/conf.d/local.start to add the following: