UPDATE-MODULES

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: Gentoo Linux
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NAME

update-modules - (re)generate module config files in /etc/

SYNOPSIS

update-modules [options]

DESCRIPTION

update-modules is a simple tool to manage the module config files found in the /etc/ directory.

The old Linux module utilities use a single file for all their configuration. This makes it difficult for packages to dynamically add information about their own modules.

update-modules makes the dynamic addition of information easier by generating the single configuration file from the many files located in /etc/modules.d/. All files in that directory are assembled together to form /etc/modules.conf.

Newer Linux module utilities include support automatically for a directory of configuration files in /etc/modprobe.d/. However, to maintain backwards compatibility with packages that do not yet support this, we still need to assemble the contents of /etc/modules.d/ and /etc/modprobe.d/ and produce the corresponding /etc/modules.conf and /etc/modprobe.conf.

Also, when requested, it is also possible to generate /etc/modules.devfs.

OPTIONS

--assume-kernel=<KV>: When calculating which files need to be generated, assume the kernel version is at least the specified KV.
-b, --backup: When updating configuration files, make backups by renaming files with a '.old' suffix if they are going to be updated.
-d, --debug: Run with shell debugging enabled. Really only useful for tracking down misbehavior.
-D, --devfs: Force generation of the deprecated /etc/modules.devfs file.
-f, --force: Force generation of files regardless of timestamps. By default, update-modules will regenerate files only when timestamps indicate that the configuration files are out of date.
-v, --verbose: Enable verbose output since by default, update-modules only displays information when it does something and not when it skips steps.

FILES

There are two types of file you can put in the module directories: normal files and exectuable files. Normal files contain standard modules configuration information, as described in modules.conf(5) (for files in /etc/modules.d/) or as described in modprobe.conf(5) (for files in /etc/modprobe.d/). Executable files are executed and their output is used as extra configuration information. Error messages are sent to stderr and thus do not become part of the configuration file.

/etc/modules.d/ - config snippets for old module utilities (<= linux-2.4)
/etc/modules.conf - sum of all files in /etc/modules.d/
/etc/modprobe.d/ - config snippets for new module utilities (>= linux-2.6)
/etc/modprobe.conf - sum of all files in /etc/modprobe.d/