When modinfo is unable to access a module due to path permissions it gets EACCES and that should be reported to the user as "permission denied" (or similar). It currently says "not found" which leads the user to believe that it was not there which is not the situation. # modinfo /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/535.216.03/6.12.22-amd64/x86_64/module/nvidia-current-peermem.ko.xz modinfo: ERROR: Module /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/535.216.03/6.12.22-amd64/x86_64/module/nvidia-current-peermem.ko.xz not found. newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/535.216.03/6.12.22-amd64/x86_64/module/nvidia-current-peermem.ko.xz", 0x7ffc581232c0, 0) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied) This happens under SE Linux if the file has the wrong label.