# ati-drivers-12.11_beta: unable to query kernel module

## Sanya_M

I got this message in Xorg.0.log:

"(EE) fglrx(0): unable to query kernel module!(EE) fglrx(0): PreInit failed"

Of course, X doesn't start. Previous stable ati-drivers worked perfectly on the same kernel.

If someone got working ati-drivers-12.11 on 3.6.x kernels and xorg-server 1.13, please, show me your kernel config.

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## Navar

You need to give more information, starting with the actual GPU hardware you're using and what driver/ebuild you had functional before.

ATI tends to kill off support of older models with every major version bump on their drivers.  Determine if your card is still supported via the closed source ati-drivers or you may need to switch to the open source radeon driver.

Your error to me sounds like either your hardware isn't supported or your extra firmware to support it isn't getting into your kernel.

My reference is a newer (as of November) build here on x86_64 multilib profile.  System is i5 cpu with an ati 7850 gpu, 3.6.11-gentoo source manually configured kernel.  I'm using a Gnome 2 desktop.  If you're using similar newer hardware, what I mention below may be applicable to you.

This had been running flawless with xorg-server 1.12.4 to 1.13.1.  However, the recent ati-drivers-12.11_beta11 show bug reports of freezes and graphic corruption.  I had not noticed corruption issues, but there's definitely a serious quality control problem when energy savings kick on (screen saver) or easily reproducible from just logging out of Gnome to shutdown X (I manually startx instead instead of a login/display manager specifically to help avoid issues like this).  Each result in a hard lockup, signal loss to display, Alt-SysRq is completely non-functional, aka dead in the water other than a hard reset.

IMHO, the current ati-drivers-12.11_beta11 should not be released in the 'stable' category.  Even though they are literally in the testing/beta ATI deny deny deny category already anyway.   :Wink: 

After several attempts to make sure it wasn't something on my end, including entire make clean kernel rebuilds, I got tired of testing to see if I could corrupt my filesystem in the process so I'd recommend:

Mask out ati-drivers-12.11_beta11

```
# echo "=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-12.11_beta11" >>/etc/portage/package.mask
```

Falling back to starting with ati-drivers-12.11_beta (which for me have worked well) and working your way backward as needed from there.

Microcode firmware in my case is from x11-drivers/radeon-ucode-20120320.

With my particular hardware setup, my kernel has these related entries:

CONFIG_PREVENT_FIRMWARE_BUILD=y

CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL=y

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="radeon/PITCAIRN_ce.bin radeon/PITCAIRN_mc.bin radeon/PITCAIRN_me.bin radeon/PITCAIRN_pfp.bin radeon/PITCAIRN_rlc.bin"

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"

# CONFIG_FIRMWARE_EDID is not set

# Firmware Drivers

CONFIG_FIRMWARE_MEMMAP=y

# CONFIG_FB_RADEON is not set

# CONFIG_DRM is not set

In some rare cases you may want FIRMWARE_EDID set.

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