Tag: modprobe

modprobe is a Linux program originally written by Rusty Russell and used to add a loadable kernel module (LKM) to the Linux kernel or to remove an LKM from the kernel. It is commonly used indirectly: udev relies upon modprobe to load drivers for automatically detected hardware.
As of 2010 modprobe is distributed as part of the software package “module-init-tools”, for Linux kernel version 2.6 and later. It was previously developed as “modutils” for use with Linux versions 2.2.x and 2.4.x. Jon Masters and others maintain module-init-tools.
The program offers more full-featured, Swiss-army-knife features than the more basic insmod and rmmod utilities, with the following benefits:
If no switches are specified, the default is to add/insert/install the module into the kernel. Root privileges may be required for success; in some cases this requires typing sudo modprobe.
If any arguments are given after the modulename, they are passed to the kernel (in addition to any options listed in the…