Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

Just recently it was necessery to load up a tun kernel module on few CentOS Linux servers.

I’m using Debian on daily basis, and everybody that had even little of experience with Debian should already be aware about the existence of the handy:
/etc/modules file.
On Debian to enable a certain kernel module to load up on Linux boot, all necessery is to just place the kernel module name in /etc/modules.
For example loading the tun tunneling kernel module I issue the command:

debian:~# echo tun >> /etc/modules


I wondered if CentOS, also supports /etc/modules as it was necessery now to add this tun module to load up on CentOS’s boot.
After a bit of research I’ve figured out CentOS does not have support for adding modules names in /etc/modules , anyhow after consulting CentOS documentation on http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-kernel-modules-persistant.html , I found CentOS and RHEL use /etc/rc.modules instead of Debian’s /etc/modules to load up any custom kernel modules not loaded by default during system boot.

Therefore instructing the RHEL Linux to load up my desired tun module in kernel on next boot was as easy as executing:

[root@centos ~]# echo 'modprobe tun' >> /etc/rc.modules
[root@centos ~]# chmod +x /etc/rc.modules


Now on next boot CentOS will load up the tun module in kernel. Achiving the same module load up is also possible through /etc/rc.local , but it’s not recommended way as /etc/rc.local would load up the kernel module after all of the rest init boot scripts complete and therefore will load up the module slightly later, at the final boot stage.