Automatic Loading of Pre-Requisite Modules

The response to Ticket #2, now Closed, implemented a solution for automatically loading Package dependencies such as shared libraries.

To a lesser extent the same problem applies to Modules since some Packages cannot work without the corresponding kernel Module being loaded. One good example is the new "netatalk" Package which demands that the "appletalk" Module is present.

The problem is not so much the loading of Modules into a running kernel (as in insmod / modprobe) but rather the installation of the Module (and its dependencies) into /lib/modules/, without user intervention.

The key component required for the solution is therefore a script which takes a command-line argument specifying the name of a module (without a file extension) and extracts that from modules.tgz, together with any dependencies, and copies it (them) to /lib/modules/.

The saving of any new Module files can remain a manual user task.

In addition it would be necessary to call the new script from /init (root.linuxrc) and from /usr/sbin/apkg based on the contents of a new per-Package data file listing the required Modules. Also needs a change to buildpacket.pl based on the approach used for Ticket #2.