If I’ve already blacklisted nouveau, why is `options nouveau modeset=0` necessary?

All the instructions for disabling the Nouveau driver (for example, the official NVidia guide to using CUDA with their proprietary drivers) suggest that you create a modprobe.d file with the contents:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

This is great, it works. But I don’t understand why it’s suggested to do options nouveau modeset=0 after blacklisting the driver itself. What does the additional configuration accomplish?

Solution 1:

I took a look at nouveau_drm.c and it looks like the module parameter modeset=0 just disables the driver.

I could be mistaken, but my reading of the two directives is as follows:

1. blacklist nouveau: prevent the kernel from loading the nouveau module at all.
2. options nouveau modeset=0: if the nouveau module is built into the kernel directly, disable it.