[ILUG] Red Hat sysinit and depmod

[Anthony]

Hi there,

As a Linux (Red Hat 6.2) relative newbie who likes to know what is going
on under the hood, I was going through the rc.sysinint script and
noticed that `depmod -a' is run at each startup or reboot.

I am curious as to why this is so. Surely `depmod -a' only needs to be
ran after a kernel recompile or when the contents of the
/lib/modules/[kernel_version] directory changes.

On a standard install (with PCMCIA) this directory is quite full and
searching through all the dependencies takes a noticeable time on my
old and creaking P120 laptop.

If anyone has any insight into why this is so, I would be delighted to
know. 

Thanks in advance,
Anthony Geoghegan