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Kudzu is a computer hardware probing program (written by Red Hat) which relies on a library of hardware device information. It is not to be confused with kudzu, a vine-like plant.
When the computer boots, kudzu detects changes in the running system's hardware configuration, if any, and activates the newly detected hardware (or removal of hardware). kudzu only runs at boot time, and then exits. There is no performance penalty during normal operation. (Since Fedora release 9, kudzu is superseded by HAL) kudzu detects and configures new and/or changed hardware on a system.
When started, kudzu detects the current hardware, and checks it against a database stored in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf, if one exists. It then determines if any hardware has been added or removed from the system. If so, it gives the users the opportunity to configure any added hardware, and unconfigure any removed hardware. It then updates the database in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf. If no previous database exists, kudzu attempts to determine what devices have already been configured, by looking at /etc/modprobe.conf, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/, and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
—help, -?
-q, --quiet
-s, --safe
-t, --timeout [seconds]
-k, --kernel [version]
-b, --bus [bus]
-c, --class [class]
-f, --file [file]
-p, --probe
/etc/sysconfig/hwconf
/etc/sysconfig/kudzu
/etc/modprobe.conf
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
The serial probe will disturb any currently in-use devices, and returns odd results if used on machines acting as serial consoles. On some older graphics cards, the DDC probe can do strange things.
Running kudzu to configure network adapters post-boot after the network has started may have unintended results.
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Red Hat, Inc. "kudzu(8) - Linux man page" . Retrieved 2020-09-01.
