modprobe

For example, udev relies upon modprobe to load drivers for automatically detected hardware.

[citation needed] Modprobe was originally written by Rusty Russell and is distributed as part of the software package "kmod"[1] (maintained by Lucas De Marchi and others).

Root privileges are typically required to perform the actions that modprobe attempts.

For example, setting the mixer right after loading a sound card module, or uploading the firmware to a device immediately prior to enabling it.

Although these actions must be implemented by external programs, modprobe synchronizes their execution with module loading/unloading.