modprobe

modprobe intelligently adds or removes a module from the Linux kernel: note that for convenience, there is no difference between _ and - in module names. modprobe looks in the module directory /lib/modules/$(uname -r) for all the modules and other files, except for the optional /etc/modprobe.conf configuration file and /etc/modprobe.d directory.

• modprobe [EN] @ Wikipedia

Documentation

• man 8 'modprobe' [EN]
• man 5 'modprobe.conf' [EN]

Syntax

modprobe [PARAMETER ...] [MODULE] [MODULE PARAMETER ...]

Parameters

-a, --all

Insert all module names on the command line.

--allow-unsupported-modules

Load unsupported modules even if disabled in configuration.

-b, --use-blacklist

This option causes modprobe to apply the blacklist commands in the configuration files (if any) to module names as well.

-c, --showconfig

Dump out the effective configuration from the config directory and exit.

-C FILE/DIR, --config FILE/DIR

This option overrides the default configuration FILE/DIR (/etc/modprobe.d or /etc/mod-probe.conf).

-D, --show-depends

List the dependencies of a module (or alias), including the module itself. This produces a (possibly empty) set of module filenames, one per line, each starting with insmod. Install commands which apply are shown prefixed by install. It does not run any of the install commands.

NOTE:

modinfo can be used to extract dependencies of a module from the module itself, but knows nothing of aliases or install commands.

-f, --force

Try to strip any versioning information from the module which might otherwise stop it from loading: this is the same as using both --force-vermagic and --force-modversion. Naturally, these checks are there for your protection, so using this option is dangerous.

This applies to any modules inserted: both the module (or alias) on the command line and any modules it on which it depends.

--first-time

Normally, modprobe will succeed (and do nothing) if told to insert a module which is already present or to remove a module which isn't present. This is ideal for simple scripts; however, more complicated scripts often want to know whether modprobe really did something: this option makes modprobe fail in the case that it actually didn't do anything.

-i, --ignore-install, --ignore-remove

This option causes modprobe to ignore install and remove commands in the configuration file (if any) for the module specified on the command line (any dependent modules are still subject to commands set for them in the configuration file).

-l, --list

List all modules matching the given wildcard (or * if no wildcard is given). This option is provided for backwards compatibility: see find and basename for a more flexible alternative.

-n, --dry-run

This option does everything but actually insert or delete the modules (or run the install or remove commands). Combined with -v, it is useful for debugging problems.

-q; --quiet

Normally modprobe will report an error if you try to remove or insert a module it can’t find (and isn’t an alias or install/remove command). With this flag, modprobe will simply ignore any bogus names (the kernel uses this to opportunistically probe for modules which might exist).

-r, --remove

This option causes modprobe to remove rather than insert a module. If the modules it depends on are also unused, modprobe will try to remove them too. Unlike insertion, more than one module can be specified on the command line (it does not make sense to specify module parameters when removing modules).

There is usually no reason to remove modules, but some buggy modules require it. Your kernel may not support removal of modules.

-R, --resolve-alias

Print all module names matching an alias. This can be useful for debugging module alias problems.

-s, --syslog

This option causes any error messages to go through the syslog mechanism (as LOG_DAEMON with level LOG_NOTICE) rather than to standard error. This is also automatically enabled when stderr is unavailable.

This option is passed through install or remove commands to other modprobe commands in the MODPROBE_OPTIONS environment variable.

-S, --set-version

Set the kernel version, rather than using uname to decide on the kernel version (which dictates where to find the modules).

--show-depends

List the dependencies of a module (or alias), including the module itself. This produces a (possibly empty) set of module filenames, one per line, each starting with insmod and is typically used by distributions to determine which modules to include when generating initrd/initramfs images.

-w, --wait

This option is applicable only with the -r or --remove option. It causes modprobe to block in the kernel (within the kernel module handling code itself) waiting for the specified module’s reference count to reach zero. Default operation is for modprobe to operate like rmmod, which exits with EWOULDBLOCK if the module’s reference count is non-zero.