just a little background for the (bi)curious modutils-2.4.x provided a way for the user to customize things: /etc/modules.conf. here users could control aliases and options and do all sort of neat tricks when loading/unloading modules. the problem was that it didnt allow for packages to easily provide their own little snippets. should all those packages get folded into modules.conf ? should you just grep/cat the file onto modules.conf ? it's a nightmare. so distros invented /etc/modules.d/. now packages could manage their little pieces in this directory all by themselves. the only problem was that modutils knew nothing of this. it only knew modules.conf. so distros had to write a little bit of glue where the conf file would be autogenerated by all the pieces in modules.d. life, while better, is still kind of a pain. when module-init-tools-2.6.x came out, peeps had learned from the past. this means they changed two things: they included native support for a modprobe.d directory and they removed support for certain syntax deemed a pita. this syntax change is why we have a new modprobe.d instead of just using the old modules.d. however, the behavior is this: if /etc/modprobe.conf exists, use that, otherwise scan the modprobe.d directory. now distros have yet another problem. they've got packages that provide old snippets in /etc/modules.d/ and new snippets in /etc/modprobe.d/. so in comes the lube again. we automatically combine these directories and form an old-compatible modules.conf file and a new compatible modprobe.conf. what would be ideal is for all of this lube to go away. thus the latest update-modules script whines like a brat whenever a file is found in /etc/modules.d/. by being proactive here and scuttling all the modules.d pieces, we will be left with only /etc/modprobe.d/. that means no more annoying messages during boot "Updating modules.xxxx ..." which serves to slow things down. on my amd64 system with very few files, that still takes ~2 friggin seconds. less stuff to do at boot => faster boot time => maintainers get a whiny notice -mike