rmmod(8) — Linux manual page

RMMOD(8)                          rmmod                          RMMOD(8)

NAME         top

       rmmod - Simple program to remove a module from the Linux Kernel

SYNOPSIS         top

       rmmod [OPTIONS] [list of modulenames]

DESCRIPTION         top

       rmmod is a trivial program to remove a module or a list of modules
       from the kernel (when module unloading support is provided). Most
       users will want to use modprobe(8) with the -r option instead
       since it removes unused dependent modules as well.

       When a list of modules is provided, the program will process them
       one at a time. If a module is not found, rmmod will immediately
       exit with an error code. Should the module removal fail, the
       program will log an error AND continue with the next module. This
       behaviour is NOT controlled by the --force option.

OPTIONS         top

       -f, --force
           This option can be extremely dangerous: it has no effect
           unless CONFIG_MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD was set when the kernel was
           compiled. With this option, you can remove modules which are
           being used, or which are not designed to be removed, or have
           been marked as unsafe (see lsmod(8)).

       -s, --syslog
           Send errors to syslog instead of standard error.

       -v, --verbose
           Print messages about what the program is doing. Usually rmmod
           prints messages only if something goes wrong.

       -V, --version
           Show version of program and exit.

       -h, --help
           Print the help message and exit.

COPYRIGHT         top

       This manual page originally Copyright 2002, Rusty Russell, IBM
       Corporation.

SEE ALSO         top

       modprobe(8), insmod(8), lsmod(8), modinfo(8), depmod(8)

BUGS         top

       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.

AUTHORS         top

       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.

COLOPHON         top

       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                       RMMOD(8)

Pages that refer to this page: delete_module(2),  insmod(8),  kmod(8),  modprobe(8)

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