How to determine your Linux netwrok driver

To find which driver is controlling your network device, you need look into the sysfs directory. sysfs is a virtual filesystem and mounted at /sys.

# grep "sysfs" /etc/fstab
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0

sysfs provides a glimpse into how the different portions of the kernel are hooked together, with many different symlinks pointing all around the filesystem.

First of all, check your network devices:

# ls /sys/class/net/
eth0  lo  tun0  tun1  wlan0

This tells me that I have one ethernet interface (eth0), two vpn interfaces (tun0 and tun0) and one wireless interface (wlan0).

1. Follow the /sys/class/net/eth0/device symlink into the directory which contains the info for eth0. Note that the /sys/class/net/eth0 directory might also be a symlink on the newer versions of the kernel.

# cd /sys/class/net/eth0/device
# ls
broken_parity_status  device  irq            modalias  net        remove  resource   resource2_wc  subsystem         uevent
class                 driver  local_cpulist  msi_bus   numa_node  rescan  resource0  resource4     subsystem_device  vendor
config                enable  local_cpus     msi_irqs  power      reset   resource2  resource4_wc  subsystem_vendor  vpd

2. Within the directory, there is a symlink to the driver, and within the driver, there is another symlink called module.

# ls -l  | grep driver
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     0 Oct  4 10:34 driver -> ../../../../bus/pci/drivers/r8169
# ls -l driver/ | grep module
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    0 Oct  4 10:34 module -> ../../../../module/r8169

We can see that module r8169 is controlling your eth0 device.

A easy way to do this is to use the "basename" and "readlink" command:

# basename `readlink /sys/class/net/eth0/device/driver/module`
r8169

Here is another example for how to look at a USB device driver:

# ls /sys/class/tty/ | grep USB
ttyUSB0

You can trace through sysfs for this device to find the controlling module, as
shown in the previous section:

# basename `readlink /sys/class/tty/ttyUSB0/device/driver/module`
pl2303

Summary:
1. Find the proper sysfs class device that the device is bound to. Network devices are listed in /sys/class/net and tty devices in /sys/class/tty. Other types of devices are listed in other directories in /sys/class, depending on the type of device.

2. Trace through the sysfs tree to find the module name that controls this device. It will be found in the /sys/class/class_name/device_name/device/driver/ module, and can be displayed using the readlink and basename applications:

$ basename `readlink /sys/class/class_name/device_name/device/driver/module`

For kernel module installation:
3. Search the kernel Makefiles for the CONFIG_ rule that builds this module name by using find and grep:

# find -type f -name Makefile | xargs grep module_name

4. Search in the kernel configuration system for that configuration value and go to the location in the menu that it specifies to enable that driver to be built.