RMMOD(8)

💅 RMMOD — bestie's guide to yeeting kernel modules ✨

okay so welcome to rmmod(8), the manual page for the icon herself: rmmod. she's from the kmod family, she lives in section 8 (system admin things), and her whole job is unplugging modules from your Linux kernel. let's get into it 🫶

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

rmmod — a simple lil program to remove a module from the Linux Kernel. that's the whole vibe. no cap. 🎀

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

rmmod [OPTIONS] [list of modulenames]

yes bestie, she takes options and a whole guest list of module names. multitasking queen 👑

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so rmmod is a trivial program — and I mean that affectionately — that removes a module, or a list of modules, from the kernel. that is, when module unloading support is provided. (if it's not, that's a whole other situation, and it's giving "not today" 😭)

lowkey though? most users are gonna want modprobe(8) with the -r option instead, because that one removes unused dependent modules too. like, it does the extra credit. rmmod is the girl who does exactly the assignment and nothing more. respect. 💅

when you hand her a list of modules, she processes them one at a time. and here's the important part, so listen up:

• if a module is not found, rmmod will immediately exit with an error code. like, she's done. she's leaving.
• if the module removal fails, the program will log an error AND continue with the next module. so she's upset but she's still showing up. 💀

and the biggest plot twist: this behaviour is NOT controlled by the --force option. that's right. --force does not touch this. periodt.

---

💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -f, --force — this option can be extremely dangerous bestie, like I'm not being dramatic. it has no effect unless CONFIG_MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD was set when the kernel was compiled. with this option you can remove modules which are being used, or which were not designed to be removed, or which have been marked as unsafe (peep lsmod(8) for that). this is the "I know a shortcut" option and the shortcut is a cliff. be careful. 🙈
• -s, --syslog — sends errors to syslog instead of standard error. so when things go wrong, the message goes somewhere else. mysterious. ✨
• -v, --verbose — prints messages about what the program is doing. usually rmmod only speaks up if something goes wrong, so this is her talkative era. 🌈
• -V, --version — show the version of the program and exit. quick lil flex. 💅
• -h, --help — print the help message and exit. your girl always has a cheat sheet. 🎀

---

👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

this manual page is originally Copyright 2002, Rusty Russell, IBM Corporation. legends only. 🫶

---

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

go read these too, they're the friend group:

• modprobe(8)
• insmod(8)
• lsmod(8)
• modinfo(8)
• depmod(8)

---

🐛 BUGS 🐛

found a bug? please direct any bug reports to kmod's issue tracker at https://github.com/kmod-project/kmod/issues/ — and bring receipts bestie:

• the version used
• steps to reproduce the problem
• the expected outcome

that's the whole trio. don't leave one out, I'm begging 😭

---

💜 AUTHORS 💜

numerous contributions have come from the linux-modules mailing list <linux-modules@vger.kernel.org> and Github. it's giving community effort. 🦋

if you have a clone of kmod.git itself, the output of git-shortlog(1) and git-blame(1) can show you the authors for specific parts of the project. detective work, but make it git. 🔍

Lucas De Marchi <lucas.de.marchi@gmail.com> is the current maintainer of the project. main character energy, honestly. 👑

---

okay that's the whole page, you ate that 💅 this was kmod, 2026-10-30, RMMOD(8) — now go unload something responsibly, bestie 🌸✨