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, this line in your /etc/rc.d/rc.modules will load the
driver for a 3com 3c509b ethernet card (PnP mode on the card disabled):

/sbin/modprobe 3c509

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'...
eth0: 3c509 at 0x360 tag 1, 10baseT port, address  00 a0 24 28 ec a0, IRQ 10.
3c509.c:1.12 6/4/97 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
eth0: Setting Rx mode to 1 addresses.
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/ 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.