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.