DH_MODALIASES(1)

💖 DH_MODALIASES 💖

okay bestie, so this is dh_modaliases, and it lives in the Debhelper section of the manual (section 1, the "you can actually run this in a terminal" section). Strap in, it's giving modaliases and it's giving substvar, and honestly? iconic.

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✨ NAME ✨

dh_modaliases — scan kmod modaliases and provide a substvar for them 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dh_modaliases [debhelper options]

that's it. that's the whole entrance. no cap.

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so dh_modaliases is the girl for packages that ship third-party kernel modules — either in binary form, or as sources (with like DKMS and friends). she goes and extracts the modules' modaliases, and she'll get them from one of two places:

• the compiled .ko files themselves, for packages that ship them already compiled — she uses modinfo for this 🔍
• or a package file debian/package.modaliases (more on that below, keep reading bestie)

she creates a package substitution variable, ${modaliases}, and you're gonna add it to debian/control like this:

XB-Modaliases: ${modaliases}

and why do we care? because this is what lets software that's out here looking for missing driver packages (think Jockey, or the operating system installer) figure out which package(s) will provide a driver for a piece of hardware — and it identifies that hardware by its modalias. so like, hardware says "hey I have this modalias", and because of you, the system knows which package has the driver. main character energy fr fr 👑

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🎀 PACKAGE MODALIAS FILES 🎀

okay so here's the situation. if a package ships source code (using DKMS, module-assistant, etc.) instead of compiled binary kernel modules, then dh_modaliases straight up can't figure out the modaliases by scanning the *.ko files. not her fault, there's just nothing compiled to scan 💀. so you have to hand her the modalias list yourself, manually, as a package file:

debian/package.modaliases

the format matches the /lib/modules/uname -r/modules.alias file from the Linux kernel. examples, look at her:

alias ssb:v1234id5678 snd_super_booster alias
pci:v000010DEd0000004Esv*sd*bc03sc*i* nvidia_current

and if you wanna generate a list like this yourself, you can — as long as you locally build and install this module, then run:

modinfo mymodname | perl -nae 'print "alias $1 mymodname\n" if /^alias:\s+(.*)$/'

(obvi swap "mymodname" out for the actual module name, bestie, don't just copy-paste and pray 🙈)

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• the standard debhelper options are supported. that's the whole list. she's lowkey minimal like that ✨

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• debhelper(1)
• dkms(8)

this program is an extension to debhelper. family. 🫶

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🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>

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and that's the whole page, babe — this one's from version 1:0.10.13, dated 2026-10-01, and it's part of Debhelper. go forth, ship those modaliases, make the installer's whole day. slay 💖🎀✨