depmod(8) — Linux manual page

DEPMOD(8)                        depmod                        DEPMOD(8)

NAME

       depmod - Generate modules.dep and map files.

SYNOPSIS

       depmod [-b basedir] [-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

       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 /lib/modules/version and determining what symbols it
       exports and what symbols it needs. By default, 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

       -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
           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.

       -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.

       -C, --config file or directory
           This option overrides the default configuration directory at
           /etc/depmod.d/.

       -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, --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, --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

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

SEE ALSO

       depmod.d(5), modprobe(8), modules.dep(5)

AUTHORS

       Jon Masters <jcm@jonmasters.org>
           Developer

       Robby Workman <rworkman@slackware.com>
           Developer

       Lucas De Marchi <lucas.de.marchi@gmail.com>
           Developer

COLOPHON

       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
       2024-06-14.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2024-06-11.)  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                           06/14/2024                      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)

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