modprobe: cannot parse modules.dep error

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Wednesday 26 December 2007 11:58, Saravanan Chanemouganandam wrote:
> Hello Vda,
>
> Execuse me for the late reply as I was on christmas holidays.
>
> well, I have included your "test code" in the modprobe.c file and performed
> the fresh rootfs again using only busybox and iptables for simpler
>
> 	1.) compiled and installed BusyBox v1.1.4-pre0 to nfs development rootfs
> "/home/Mybusybox/uCrootfs/"

Wher did you get "BusyBox v1.1.4-pre0"? I don't see such
thing at http://busybox.net/downloads/

Can you try something newer please (like 1.8.2)?
Hunting bugs in ancient releases is counter productive.

> 	2.) compiled and installed iptables ( with NO_SHARED_LIBS=1)
> 	/home/Mybusybox/uCrootfs/sbin and
>        /home/Mybusybox/uCrootfs/lib
> 	3.) installed kernel modules to
> 	/home/Mybusybox/uCrootfs       that installs the module dependencies
>        /home/Mybusybox/uCrootfs/lib/modules/2.6.16-cm-x270/
>
> Now, when executing iptables it finds modules.dep and other files
> under /lib/modules/2.6.16-cm-x270/ but tries to load module "ip_tables" and
> throws error as
>
> sara:/lib/modules/2.6.16-cm-x270$ iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o br_wan
> -j MASQUERADE
> modprobe: module ip_tables not found.
> modprobe: failed to load module ip_tables
> modprobe: module ip_tables not found.
> modprobe: failed to load module ip_tables
> modprobe: module ip_tables not found.
> modprobe: failed to load module ip_tables
> modprobe: module ip_tables not found.
> modprobe: failed to load module ip_tables
> cm-debian:/lib/modules/2.6.16-cm-x270$

So, iptables tries to load ip_tables even though it is statically
compiled in the kernel. I am not an expert in iptables.
You can do the following:

* take a look at iptables (userspace utility) source and
  try to figure out why it thinks module load is necessary
  when it obviously is NOT necessary.
* ask netfilter people and/or google the net - is this a normal
  behavior for iptables, or is it a problem, and
  what people do in this case (case of having ip_tables statically
  in kernel).

> I then removed modules.dep ( as all support tables are built into kernel)
> and it throws the following output.

I don't know why you are doing this, it cannot help.

> sara:/lib/modules/2.6.16-cm-x270$ iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o br_wan
> -j MASQUERADE
> modprobe: cannot parse modules.dep
> modprobe: could not parse modules.dep

Hmm. If you truly disabled the code which exits if there is no
modules.dep, you absolutely have to see "failed to load module ip_tables"
after this. Sorry, what you show does not make sense.

> modprobe: cannot parse modules.dep
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^???

busybox 1.1.3 does not have "cannot parse" in modprobe.c or insmod.c
(it has only one instance of it in nameif.c - irrelevant).
This definitely comes from some "other" modprobe.
--
vda