Well no I didn't do that..

I'm thinking it's something old and unnecessary, but I can't understand what is triggering my installation to expect it (by the time the RPM install script is done, this thing is expected to exist.)

Other SuSE installs have never had this issue..

The thing is, pci hotplugging works fine with my PCI NIC. I just get sick of this boot message and don't approve of ripping things apart to make it behave a certain way.