What is "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 a LKM from the kernel. It is commonly used indirectly: udev relies upon modprobe to load drivers for automatically detected hardware.

modprobe is distributed as part of the software package "kmod" (maintained by Lucas De Marchi and others). It was previously developed as:

• "module-init-tools", for Linux kernel version 2.6 and later (maintained by Jon Masters and others)
• "modutils" for use with Linux versions 2.2.x and 2.4.x. .