Comment 6 for bug 158582

@Matt: I haven't actually tried it, the ifupdown source looks like gobbeldygook to me, I just put a command which *should* fix it where it would do. That will work only if ifupdown.nw understand shell syntax of course, no idea if thats the case.

I had the problem on a vserver (which doesn't even have modutils installed because it can't load any modules anyway) and "fixed" it by symlinking modprobe to /bin/true; not usable for most people probably but works for me.

Somebody who actually knows ifupdown has to have a look at this. A fix which might work for you is just removing the modprobe line from ifupdown.nw.