depmod(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | BUGS | AUTHORS | COLOPHON

DEPMOD(8)                         depmod                        DEPMOD(8)

NAME         top

       depmod - Generate modules.dep and map files.

SYNOPSIS         top

       depmod [-b basedir] [-m moduledir] [-o outdir] [-e]
       [-E Module.symvers]
              [-F System.map] [-n] [-v] [-A] [-P prefix] [-w] [version]

       depmod [-e] [-E Module.symvers] [-F System.map] [-n] [-v] [-P
       prefix]
              [-w] [version] [filename...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Linux kernel modules can provide services (called "symbols") for
       other modules to use (using one of the EXPORT_SYMBOL variants in
       the code). If a second module uses this symbol, that second module
       clearly depends on the first module. These dependencies can get
       quite complex.

       depmod creates a list of module dependencies by reading each
       module under <BASEDIR>/<MODULEDIR>/version. By default <MODULEDIR>
       is /lib/modules and <BASEDIR> is empty. See options below to
       override when needed. It determines what symbols each module
       exports and needs.  This list is written to modules.dep, and a
       binary hashed version named modules.dep.bin, in the same
       directory. If filenames are given on the command line, only those
       modules are examined (which is rarely useful unless all modules
       are listed). depmod also creates a list of symbols provided by
       modules in the file named modules.symbols and its binary hashed
       version, modules.symbols.bin. Finally, depmod will output a file
       named modules.devname if modules supply special device names
       (devname) that should be populated in /dev on boot (by a utility
       such as systemd-tmpfiles).

       If a version is provided, then that kernel version's module
       directory is used rather than the current kernel version (as
       returned by uname -r).

OPTIONS         top

       -a, --all
           Probe all modules. This option is enabled by default if no
           file names are given in the command-line.

       -A, --quick
           This option scans to see if any modules are newer than the
           modules.dep file before any work is done: if not, it silently
           exits rather than regenerating the files.

       -b basedir, --basedir basedir
           Override the base directory <BASEDIR> where modules are
           located. If your modules are not currently in the (normal)
           directory /lib/modules/version, but in a staging area, you can
           specify a basedir which is prepended to the directory name.
           This basedir is stripped from the resulting modules.dep file,
           so it is ready to be moved into the normal location. Use this
           option if you are a distribution vendor who needs to pre-
           generate the meta-data files rather than running depmod again
           later.

           If a relative path is given, it's relative to the current
           working directory.

           Example:
               depmod -b /my/build/staging/dir/

           This expects all input files under
           /my/build/staging/dir/lib/modules/$(uname -r) and generates
           index files under that same directory.

       -m moduledir, --moduledir moduledir
           Override the module directory <MODULEDIR>, which defaults to
           /lib/modules prefix set at build time. This is useful when
           building modules.dep file in basedir for a system that uses a
           different prefix, e.g. /usr/lib/modules vs /lib/modules.

           Relative and absolute paths are accepted, but they are always
           relative to the basedir.

           Examples:
               depmod -b /tmp/build -m /kernel-modules
               depmod -b /tmp/build -m kernel-modules

           This expects all input files under /tmp/build/kernel-
           modules/$(uname -r) and generates index files under that same
           directory.

           Without an accompanying -b argument, the moduledir is relative
           to /. Example:

               depmod -m foo/bar

           This expects all input files under /foo/bar/$(uname -r) and
           generates index files under the same directory. Unless libkmod
           is prepared to handle that arbitrary location, it won't work
           in runtime.

       -o outdir, --outdir outdir
           Set the output directory where depmod will store any generated
           file. outdir serves as a root to that location, similar to how
           basedir is used. Also this setting takes precedence and if
           used together with basedir it will result in the input being
           that directory, but the output being the one set by outdir.

           If a relative path is given, it's relative to the current
           working directory.

           Example:
               depmod -o /my/build/staging/dir/

           This expects all input files under /lib/modules/$(uname -r)
           and generates index files under
           /my/build/staging/dir/lib/modules/$(uname -r).

       -C file or directory, --config file or directory
           This option overrides the default configuration files. See
           depmod.d(5).

       -e, --errsyms
           When combined with the -F option, this reports any symbols
           which a module needs which are not supplied by other modules
           or the kernel. Normally, any symbols not provided by modules
           are assumed to be provided by the kernel (which should be true
           in a perfect world), but this assumption can break especially
           when additionally updated third party drivers are not
           correctly installed or were built incorrectly.

       -E Module.symvers, --symvers Module.symvers
           When combined with the -e option, this reports any symbol
           versions supplied by modules that do not match with the symbol
           versions provided by the kernel in its Module.symvers. This
           option is mutually incompatible with -F.

       -F System.map, --filesyms System.map
           Supplied with the System.map produced when the kernel was
           built, this allows the -e option to report unresolved symbols.
           This option is mutually incompatible with -E.

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

       -n, --show, --dry-run
           This sends the resulting modules.dep and the various map files
           to standard output rather than writing them into the module
           directory.

       -P
           Some architectures prefix symbols with an extraneous
           character. This specifies a prefix character (for example '_')
           to ignore.

       -v, --verbose
           In verbose mode, depmod will print (to stdout) all the symbols
           each module depends on and the module's file name which
           provides that symbol.

       -V, --version
           Show version of program and exit. See below for caveats when
           run on older kernels.

       -w
           Warn on duplicate dependencies, aliases, symbol versions, etc.

COPYRIGHT         top

       This manual page originally Copyright 2002, Rusty Russell, IBM
       Corporation. Portions Copyright Jon Masters, and others.

SEE ALSO         top

       depmod.d(5), 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                      DEPMOD(8)

Pages that refer to this page: depmod.d(5)modules.dep(5)insmod(8)kernel-install(8)kmod(8)lsmod(8)modprobe(8)rmmod(8)