INSMOD(8) insmod INSMOD(8)

insmod - Simple program to insert a module into the Linux Kernel

insmod [OPTIONS] [filename] [module options]

insmod is a trivial program to insert a module into the kernel. Most users will want to use modprobe(8) instead, which is more clever and can handle module dependencies.

Only the most general of error messages are reported: as the work of trying to link the module is now done inside the kernel, the dmesg(1) usually gives more information about errors.

-f, --force

This option can be extremely dangerous: it tells the kernel to ignore the module version and vermagic fields when loading. With this option, you can load modules build locally or by third parties, although this can lead to memory corruption, system crashes and data loss.

-s, --syslog

Send errors to syslog instead of standard error.

-v, --verbose

Print messages about what the program is doing. Usually insmod prints messages only if something goes wrong.

-V, --version

Show version of program and exit.

-h, --help

Print the help message and exit.

This manual page originally Copyright 2002, Rusty Russell, IBM Corporation.

modprobe(8), rmmod(8), lsmod(8), modinfo(8), depmod(8)

Please direct any bug reports to kmod's issue tracker at http://github.com/kmod-project/kmod/issues/ alongside with version used, steps to reproduce the problem and the expected outcome.

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.

2025-03-28 kmod