modprobe.d(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION FORMAT | CONFIGURATION DIRECTORIES AND PRECEDENCE | COMMANDS | COMPATIBILITY | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | BUGS | AUTHORS | COLOPHON

MODPROBE.D(5)                   modprobe.d                  MODPROBE.D(5)

NAME         top

       modprobe.d - Configuration directory for modprobe

SYNOPSIS         top

       /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf

       /run/modprobe.d/*.conf

       /usr/local/lib/modprobe.d/*.conf

       /usr/lib/modprobe.d/*.conf

       /lib/modprobe.d/*.conf

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.

CONFIGURATION FORMAT         top

       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 DIRECTORIES AND PRECEDENCE         top

       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).

COMMANDS         top

       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.

COMPATIBILITY         top

       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.

COPYRIGHT         top

       This manual page originally Copyright 2004, Rusty Russell, IBM
       Corporation.

SEE ALSO         top

       modprobe(8), modules.dep(5)

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 <linux-modules@vger.kernel.org> 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 <lucas.de.marchi@gmail.com> 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 man-pages@man7.org] If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       linux-modules@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/kernel/kmod/kmod.git⟩ on
       2025-02-02.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2025-01-27.)  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 man-pages@man7.org

kmod                            2025-02-02                  MODPROBE.D(5)

Pages that refer to this page: modprobe(8)