create_module(2)

create_module2

Create a loadable module entry

Usage

#include <linux/module.h>

[[deprecated]] caddr_t create_module(const char *name, size_t size);

Overview

Note: This system call is present only before Linux 2.6.

create_module() attempts to create a loadable module entry and reserve the kernel memory that will be needed to hold the module. This system call requires privilege.

Return value

On success, returns the kernel address at which the module will reside. On error, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

Errors

EEXIST

A module by that name already exists.

EFAULT

name is outside the program's accessible address space.

EINVAL

The requested size is too small even for the module header information.

ENOMEM

The kernel could not allocate a contiguous block of memory large enough for the module.

ENOSYS

create_module() is not supported in this version of the kernel (e.g., Linux 2.6 or later).

EPERM

The caller was not privileged (did not have the CAP_SYS_MODULE capability).

Releases

17 releases since Debian 1.1 (Buzz); the text changed 13 times.

  1. 1.1
  2. 1.2
  3. 1.3
  4. 2.0–2.1
  5. 2.2
  6. 3.0–4.0
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. Arch

Standards

Linux.

History

Removed in Linux 2.6.

This obsolete system call is not supported by glibc. No declaration is provided in glibc headers, but, through a quirk of history, glibc versions before glibc 2.23 did export an ABI for this system call. Therefore, in order to employ this system call, it was sufficient to manually declare the interface in your code; alternatively, you could invoke the system call using syscall(2).

From man-pages 6.19-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.