These are modules that can be loaded into the Linux kernel, providing extra support for mice, CD-ROM drives, ethernet cards, and other devices. See these files in the "docs" directory for more information on loading these kernel modules: CDROM-HOWTO, ELF-HOWTO, Ethernet-HOWTO, Ftape-HOWTO, HAM-HOWTO, Hardware-HOWTO, Kernel-HOWTO, NET-2-HOWTO, PCI-HOWTO, PCMCIA-HOWTO, SCSI-HOWTO, SCSI-Programming-HOWTO, Serial-HOWTO, Sound-HOWTO, UMSDOS-HOWTO. Also see the documentation in /usr/doc/modules, and the Documentation directory in newer Linux kernel source. (/usr/src/linux/Documentation) As a simple example, these lines were added to /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 to load drivers for a WD ethernet card: /sbin/insmod 8390 /sbin/insmod wd io=0x240 irq=10 Note that this must happen *before* using ifconfig on eth0 or setting up eth0 related routes! Here's how this will look when you boot your machine: INIT: Entering runlevel: 3 Going multiuser... loading device 'eth0'... wd.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov) eth0: WD80x3 at 0x240, 00 00 C0 AD 58 55 WD8013, IRQ 10, shared memory at 0xcc000-0xcffff. Mounting remote file systems... Starting daemons: syslogd klogd portmap inetd lpd mountd nfsd If you've installed the modules.tgz package, you'll have all of these modules installed on your machine under /lib/modules/2.0.30 already. So, to start using kernel modules you'll want to edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file to select which modules you want loaded at boot time. You can also use kerneld, a daemon which load and unloads kernel modules automatically on demand.