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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION FORMAT | CONFIGURATION DIRECTORIES AND PRECEDENCE | COMMANDS | COMPATIBILITY | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | BUGS | AUTHORS | COLOPHON |
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MODPROBE.D(5) modprobe.d MODPROBE.D(5)
modprobe.d - Configuration directory for modprobe
/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf
/run/modprobe.d/*.conf
/usr/local/lib/modprobe.d/*.conf
/usr/local/lib/modprobe.d/*.conf
/lib/modprobe.d/*.conf
Because the modprobe command can add or remove more than one
module, due to modules having dependencies, we need a method of
specifying what options are to be used with those modules. One can
also use them to create convenient aliases: alternate names for a
module, or they can override the normal modprobe behavior
altogether for those with special requirements (such as inserting
more than one module).
Note that module and alias names (like other module names) can
have - or _ in them: both are interchangeable throughout all the
module commands as underscore conversion happens automatically.
The configuration files contain one command per line, with blank
lines and lines starting with '#' ignored (useful for adding
comments). A '\' at the end of a line causes it to continue on the
next line, which makes the files a bit neater.
See the COMMANDS section below for more.
Configuration files are read from directories in listed in
SYNOPSIS in that order of precedence. Once a file of a given
filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent
directories is ignored.
All configuration files are sorted in lexicographic order,
regardless of the directory they reside in. Configuration files
can either be completely replaced (by having a new configuration
file with the same name in a directory of higher priority) or
partially replaced (by having a configuration file that is ordered
later).
NOTE: The configuration directories may be altered via the
MODPROBE_OPTIONS environment variable. See the ENVIRONMENT section
in modprobe(8).
alias wildcard modulename
This allows you to give alternate names for a module. For
example: "alias my-mod really_long_modulename" means you can
use "modprobe my-mod" instead of "modprobe
really_long_modulename". You can also use shell-style
wildcards, so "alias my-mod* really_long_modulename" means
that "modprobe my-mod-something" has the same effect. You
can't have aliases to other aliases (that way lies madness),
but aliases can have options, which will be added to any other
options.
Note that modules can also contain their own aliases, which
you can see using modinfo. These aliases are used as a last
resort (ie. if there is no real module, install, remove, or
alias command in the configuration).
blacklist modulename
Modules can contain their own aliases: usually these are
aliases describing the devices they support, such as
"pci:123...". These "internal" aliases can be overridden by
normal "alias" keywords, but there are cases where two or more
modules both support the same devices, or a module invalidly
claims to support a device that it does not: the blacklist
keyword indicates that all of that particular module's
internal aliases are to be ignored.
install modulename command...
This command instructs modprobe to run your command instead of
inserting the module in the kernel as normal. The command can
be any shell command: this allows you to do any kind of
complex processing you might wish. For example, if the module
"fred" works better with the module "barney" already installed
(but it doesn't depend on it, so modprobe won't automatically
load it), you could say "install fred /sbin/modprobe barney;
/sbin/modprobe --ignore-install fred", which would do what you
wanted. Note the --ignore-install, which stops the second
modprobe from running the same install command again. See also
remove below.
The long term future of this command as a solution to the
problem of providing additional module dependencies is not
assured and it is intended to replace this command with a
warning about its eventual removal or deprecation at some
point in a future release. Its use complicates the automated
determination of module dependencies by distribution
utilities, such as mkinitrd (because these now need to somehow
interpret what the install commands might be doing. In a
perfect world, modules would provide all dependency
information without the use of this command and work is
underway to implement soft dependency support within the Linux
kernel.
If you use the string "$CMDLINE_OPTS" in the command, it will
be replaced by any options specified on the modprobe command
line. This can be useful because users expect "modprobe fred
opt=1" to pass the "opt=1" arg to the module, even if there's
an install command in the configuration file. So our above
example becomes "install fred /sbin/modprobe barney;
/sbin/modprobe --ignore-install fred $CMDLINE_OPTS"
options modulename option...
This command allows you to add options to the module
modulename (which might be an alias) every time it is inserted
into the kernel: whether directly (using modprobe modulename)
or because the module being inserted depends on this module.
All options are added together: they can come from an option
for the module itself, for an alias, and on the command line.
remove modulename command...
This is similar to the install command above, except it is
invoked when "modprobe -r" is run.
softdep modulename pre: modules... post: modules...
The softdep command allows you to specify soft, or optional,
module dependencies. modulename can be used without these
optional modules installed, but usually with some features
missing. For example, a driver for a storage HBA might require
another module be loaded in order to use management features.
pre-deps and post-deps modules are lists of names and/or
aliases of other modules that modprobe will attempt to install
(or remove) in order before and after the main module given in
the modulename argument.
Example: Assume "softdep c pre: a b post: d e" is provided in
the configuration. Running "modprobe c" is now equivalent to
"modprobe a b c d e" without the softdep. Flags such as --use-
blacklist are applied to all the specified modules, while
module parameters only apply to module c.
Note: if there are install or remove commands with the same
modulename argument, softdep takes precedence.
weakdep modulename modules...
The weakdep command allows you to specify weak module
dependencies. Those are similar to pre softdep, with the
difference that userspace doesn't attempt to load that
dependency before the specified module. Instead the kernel may
request one or multiple of them during module probe, depending
on the hardware it's binding to. The purpose of weak module is
to allow a driver to specify that a certain dependency may be
needed, so it should be present in the filesystem (e.g. in
initramfs) when that module is probed.
Example: Assume "weakdep c a b". A program creating an
initramfs knows it should add a, b, and c to the filesystem
since a and b may be required/desired at runtime. When c is
loaded and is being probed, it may issue calls to
request_module() causing a or b to also be loaded.
A future version of kmod will come with a strong warning to avoid
use of the install as explained above. This will happen once
support for soft dependencies in the kernel is complete. That
support will complement the existing softdep support within this
utility by providing such dependencies directly within the
modules.
This manual page originally Copyright 2004, Rusty Russell, IBM
Corporation.
modprobe(8), modules.dep(5)
Please direct any bug reports to kmod's issue tracker at
https://github.com/kmod-project/kmod/issues/ alongside with
version used, steps to reproduce the problem and the expected
outcome.
Numerous contributions have come from the linux-modules mailing
list <[email protected]> and Github. If you have a
clone of kmod.git itself, the output of git-shortlog(1) and
git-blame(1) can show you the authors for specific parts of the
project.
Lucas De Marchi <[email protected]> is the current
maintainer of the project.
This page is part of the kmod (userspace tools for managing kernel
modules) project. Information about the project can be found at
[unknown -- if you know, please contact [email protected]] If you
have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
[email protected]. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/kernel/kmod/kmod.git⟩ on
2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
that was found in the repository was 2025-07-13.) If you discover
any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
mail to [email protected]
kmod 2025-08-11 MODPROBE.D(5)
Pages that refer to this page: modprobe(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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