[SOLVED]Determining which modules I need

[icarus127]

Hi everyone, I'm completely new to gentoo and working on my first install on my netbook. I run slackware on my Desktop and up until now had been running ubuntu 10.4 on my netbook. I got frustrated with the bloat and occasional instability of ubuntu and I've always been interested in the gentoo philosophy and I've been wanting learn more about linux system configuration which I think I will get by installing gentoo.

I've been running the install off of the gentoo livedvd on a USB drive and I was wondering how to determine what modules I need to select for automatic loading. I've been following the handbook and when I got to the bit about selecting modules I wasn't sure what to select since the list of loaded modules on the livedvd is, I think, the longest I've ever seen so I just didn't select anything hoping that this was just for exotic modules :p That's obviously not the case since my NIC doesn't even come up properly at boot. I've been looking more at lsmod and I was wondering if

[cwr]

Is the system _really_ loading every module in sight? I'd expect it to build every module, but
load only the ones it needs, but it's a long while since I used a Gentoo CD/USB. Certainly
on my system lsmod shows only the currently loaded modules, and I'd expect it to do that
in Ubuntu as well.

If wireless works with Ubuntu, then check which wireless modules are being loaded there,
and see if Gentoo is loading the same ones.

Will

[BitJam]

You can go to this site and enter the output of "lspci -n" to get a list of modules that match your hardware.

This page from Pappy's Kernel Seeds tells you how to get from module names to kernel options.

[molot]

[icarus127]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still plugging away at this. haha I didn't think any linux distro would be as steep a learning curve as slackware with almost no linux knowledge but apparently I was wrong Looks like I've got a lot to learn

I started over the install for the 3rd/4th time just to make sure I was following the handbook exactly. I did modify it a bit, the mirrorselect on the livecd is really out of date so I chroot'ed first and then emerged mirrorselect and went from there. It doesn't seem like that's made a difference and I'm thinking the problem is that I just really don't know what I'm doing kernel configuration wise. I tried configuring manually this time and that's not booting at all :p Tonight I'm going to try genkernel exactly as it is in the handbook + the module information from the debian site the BitJam gave me and see how that goes.

@BitJam Pappy's Kernel Seeds look like exactly what I need but it appears to be down, is there any comparable sites? I have google around a bit but I'm having trouble finding thorough and recent guides to kernel building.

Thanks again!

[mamac]

I'd recommand manual kernel config, then it's very easy to copy modules to be auto loaded just with a 'find' command. Try a little bit harder to configure your kernel manually, it's worth it, specially since you seem to be willing to learn.
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[mamac]

Once compiled manually, you'll find all the module with (adjust the path based on your kernel version):