RMMOD(8) rmmod RMMOD(8)

rmmod - Simple program to remove a module from the Linux Kernel

rmmod [OPTIONS] [list of modulenames]

rmmod is a trivial program to remove a module or a list of modules from the kernel (when module unloading support is provided). Most users will want to use modprobe(8) with the -r option instead since it removes unused dependent modules as well.

When a list of modules is provided, the program will process them one at a time. If a module is not found, rmmod will immediately exit with an error code. Should the module removal fail, the program will log an error AND continue with the next module. This behaviour is NOT controlled by the --force option.

-f, --force

This option can be extremely dangerous: it has no effect unless CONFIG_MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD was set when the kernel was compiled. With this option, you can remove modules which are being used, or which are not designed to be removed, or have been marked as unsafe (see lsmod(8)).

-s, --syslog

Send errors to syslog instead of standard error.

-v, --verbose

Print messages about what the program is doing. Usually rmmod 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), insmod(8), lsmod(8), modinfo(8), depmod(8)

Please direct any bug reports to kmod's issue tracker at https://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.

2025-03-06 kmod