Determine If a Specific Module is Loaded in Linux Kernel

The --first-time flag causes modprobe to fail if the module is already loaded. That in conjunction with the --dry-run (or the shorthand -n) flag makes a nice test:

modprobe -n --first-time $MODULE && echo "Not loaded" || echo "Loaded"

This also prints Loaded if the module does not exist. We can fix this by combining it with modinfo:

modinfo $MODULE >/dev/null 2>/dev/null &&
! modprobe -n --first-time $MODULE 2>/dev/null &&
echo "Loaded" || echo "Not loaded"