I am running Mandriva 2006. While the system is loading I get the following message:

WARNING: /etc/modprobe.conf line 8 ignoring bad line starting with 'blacklist'
WARNING: /etc/modprobe.conf line 9 ignoring bad line starting with 'blacklist'

This is �said� many times during the loading.

Following is the contents of my etc/modprobe.conf:

+++++++++

# This file is autogenerated from /etc/modules.conf using generate-modprobe.conf command

alias sound-slot-0 cmpci
remove snd-cmipci /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove snd-cmipci
install snd-cmipci /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-cmipci
install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; /bin/true
alias eth0 8139too
blacklist audio
blacklist snd-usb-audio
remove cmpci /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove cmpci
install cmpci /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install cmpci

+++++++++

If I put # in front of both of the 'blacklist' lines the system just puts them back and the warning is repeated except for the bad line having a different number.

moduals.conf is an empty file.

I have tried to reinstall and install the alternate drivers for my sound card but this doesn't change anything with the warning. My audio is fine with either.

Any suggestions to get rid of this 'blacklist' thing? I've had no luck Googling it. I just want to get rid of it.

Thanks, Jerry

I doubt this will help you, but I'm just a little curious. Have you tried running the generate_modprobe.conf command manually yet? I'd be interested in whether that changes anything in your modprobe.conf line.

That's a fair idea. I tried it and it didn't do anything although that wasn't too surprising since modules.conf is an empty file. I also thought I would cleverly backup and then delete modprobe.conf and let Linux re-create it by whatever means it does this. The modprobe created only had two lines:

blacklist audio
blacklist snd-usb-audio

and I got the same warning through booting except the bad lines were now (naturally) 1 and 2. When the system came up I had no sound and no LAN card which is eth0. My sound driver is cmpci so this file points to these.

Any other curiosities? I'm stumped.

Well I didn't have any really great ideas to start with. The next thing I think I'd do in your situation is look at the contents of other related files. For me, ls /etc/mod* shows that I have 4 files that start with mod and all appear to be related. I've got modules, modprobe.conf, modprobe.devfs, and modprobe.preload. If I were you I might look at those files and see if they have anything that might give you a clue. In particular, pay attention to anything having to do with sound.

If I were desperate I might do something like,

grep blacklist /etc/rc.d/*
grep blacklist /etc/init.d/*
grep blacklist /var/log/*

but this is that desperation maneuver when you have no idea what the heck to do, and you're just trying to get some clues.

If you're unfamiliar with grep, it searches the text of the files listed for any occurance of the "pattern". The pattern is blacklist. So those commands will check your initialization scripts and the majority of your log files for the occurance of the word. The next step would be to check out any files that it finds... I'd suggest something like kate with an easy to use "find" function so that you can track down the proper part of the file quickly (some of these text files might be hundreds or thousands of pages long). Also, grep will take a LONG time when used on this many files. That's a lot of text to search through. This may not really help you at all, but like I said, I don't really have any "good" ideas.

Thanks. I looked in the files and didn't get any clues. I tried the desperation action and didn't get any clues from that either.

But I now have a question -

What are these files /etc/rc.d/*, /etc/init.d/* and /var/log/*? What led you to suggest looking in these?

Actually, they are folders, not files. The * is the wildcard that means look at everything inside basically. I suggested those because your initialization scripts (basically everything that runs while your computer is booting) are mainly contained in either /etc/rc.d or /etc/init.d. I suggested /var/log because that folder contains most of the logs made by your computer. Kernel logs, boot logs, etc. I should have mentioned, to grep in those places you might have to be root because only root has permissions to read some of the files.

Crap! Just realized I made a mistake. You'll have to do grep -r blacklist /var/log/* actually. You need that -r to look at the files in the sub-folders. Sorry about that. You should be fine without the -r for the rc.d and init.d files because their subfolders shouldn't contain anything all that interesting. Again, if you get a permission denied error for the output, it means that you need to be root to read those files most likely.