Bug#548841: module-init-tools: Modprobe -q should always return 0.

Bug#548841: module-init-tools: Modprobe -q should always return 0.

On 2009-09-30 16:49, Alan Jenkins <sourcejedi.lkml@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/09, Alan Jenkins <sourcejedi.lkml@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> When calling modprobe -q with a non-existing module, it returns with
> >> exit code 1. According to the manpage, modprobe "normally" will report
> >> an error, and with -q shouldn't, so I believe the exist code should
> >> always be 0, at least that seems to be the assumption in some init
> >> scripts (e.g. binfmt-support).
> >
> > That part is ambiguous, but I guess "modprobe will simply ignore any
> > bogus names" is pretty clear.
> >
>
> > ... and comments in the git log imply we _used_ to get this right.
> >
> > ""
> >
> > Andreas, at first glance this regression is due to your commit
> > 73bdf4ab.  Care to submit a patch to revert the relevant lines?
>
> Sorry, I completely misread both the git log comments and Andreas'
> code.  This isn't a regression, it's more of a feature request.
>
> The manpage does say modprobe -q "will simply ignore any bogus names",
> implying that modprobe should return success in this case.  But
> test-modprobe/19quiet.sh has always required "modprobe -q crap" to
> return failure.
>
> So this is intentional at some level, we've always done it this way in
> the past, and we need to consider the risk of breaking scripts which
> expect the current behaviour.
>
> The binfmt-support initscript seems a bad example to me.  It does this
>
>    # comments added by me
>
>     set -e # abort if any command fails
>     ...
>     modprobe -q binfmt_misc # this will cause an abort if
> binfmt_misc.ko doesn't exist...
>     mount -t binfmt_misc ... # but so will this
>
> It's only a problem if binfmt_misc is built into the kernel.  However,
> this will be solved by the modules.builtin work.
>
> So I think we would need a better justification to change this.

Ok, but then the manpage should be fixed. How about the attached
patch?

Philipp

--
Philipp Weis

Signed-off-by: Jon Masters <jcm@jonmasters.org>