Bug#341273: Doesn't understand install and remove directives in modprobe.conf

[Erik van Konijnenburg <ekonijn@xs4all.nl>]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 01:57:32PM -0500, Norbert Veber wrote:
> yaird error: modprobe psmouse requires install /sbin/modprobe mousedev
> && /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install psmouse (fatal)
> Failed to create initrd image.
> 
> from my modprobe configuration:
> alias /dev/psaux psmouse
> install psmouse /sbin/modprobe mousedev && /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install psmouse
> remove psmouse /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove psmouse && /sbin/modprobe -r mousedev

Thanks for reporting this.

Now for the bad news: this is not a bug, this is a feature.

The reason is that install lines in the modprobe configuration are complete
shell scripts: they can invoke every executable, access every file.
That makes it impossible to find out what should be included on the initial
boot image to make the install line successful.
Rather than silently ignoring the line and producing an image that may
or may not boot, we throw an error, so that you can clean up the configuration.

In your situation, you can clean up by removing psmouse from your modprobe
configuration: if you have a mouse, the default yaird configuration will
load mousedev anyway.  If you need backward compatibility with old kernels,
consider adding mousedev to /etc/modules; it will be loaded unconditionally then.

The error message you got sucks though.  The development version
has a reworded message (bzr revision nr 15).

Regards,
Erik