Monolithic versus Modular Kernels

If you are using a monolithic kernel and need to add a new NIC driver to your system, you must rebuild your kernel (described in Chapter 3) with the new driver compiled into the kernel binary. However, if you are using a modular kernel,^[1] you probably already have a compiled network driver module that will support your NIC, and you simply need to insert this module into the kernel.

You can insert modules into the kernel using the insmod command. However, the system will forget about your insmod change to the running kernel the next time you reboot, so you need to use the linuxconf utility to make the change permanent—the linuxconf utility will also make changes to the proper files in the /etc/sysconfig directory and to the /etc/modules.conf and the /etc/sysconfig files to make your IP address and netmask settings permanent.

^[1]And you are using the .config file as supplied by Red Hat or one like it that builds the NIC drivers as modules in the /lib/modules directory.