Re: build initramfs: explain modprobe?

[Harald Hoyer <harald.hoyer-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

On 31.08.2011 00:48, John Reiser wrote:
> What properties of modprobe are essential for building initramfs?
> Modprobe works for only one kernel module at a time, and this is
> a cause of slowness.  For instance, computing the transitive
> closure of the Requires relationship over a non-small set of modules
> can be performed faster by loading modules.dep into a bash associative
> array, then processing in bash.  Also, modinfo now is invoked once per
> module to find firmware, but this can be sped up by invoking on batches
> of modules, using "split -C 32000" to avoid the argsize limit of execve.
>
> Invoking modprobe with --ignore-install seems to remove any effects
> due to (possibly host-specific) /etc/modules.d/*.conf.  Is there anything
> else that modprobe does for building initramfs, other than transitive
> closure of Requires?
>

Hmm, you are right. Modules loaded in "/etc/modules.d/*.conf" are not honored.
And yes, "modprobe" is only used to easily get the requirements.