The Wonderful World of Kernel Module Removing

linux

All I wanted to do was stop the IPv6 kernel module from starting on boot. It shouldn’t be hard, it shouldn’t be difficult and despite the early hour of the day, it shouldn’t require me to google.

But it seems that it does, as a start point the Planete Beranger Disable IPv6 post shows the many different ways to solve the problem. Unfortunately it seems that the Debian Etch install I’m testing on doesn’t like:

  # /etc/modprobe.d/00local
  alias net-pf-10 off
  alias ipv6 off

But it has no problems with a blacklist ipv6 - apart from a number of cases where that might not work and you’ll then have to rely on a install ipv6 /bin/true GAH! This hasn’t only bitten me, Planete Beranger rants in more detail in the Messy modprobe.conf post.

Amusingly I discovered this while writing a small check to show which of our servers have Ipv6 enabled (we don’t use it) but rather than a one off run it’ll now have to be a periodic check. It’s going to be one of THOSE days.