Setting System clock from hardware clock causes freeze

[Patrick Cherry]

Hello folks,

I've just been installing ubuntu on my friend's Dell Precision 370 PC.
This is the first failed install of Ubuntu I've come across :(

Firstly I had to set the SATA mode into ATA not AHCI mode (I think this
is generally referred to 'legacy' mode).  I believe this is a more
general linux kernel bug / compatibility issue.  It took me aaaages to
work this out.  If it's any colsolation the suse disks didn't work
either.

Anyway once I'd sorted that out, and I had a big grin on my face, Ubuntu
completed the first part of the installation without problems.

Then the second boot came.  The kernel started loading...  This was fine
until it got to a series of module errors (Operation not permitted when
trying to load pciehp and shpchp modules) and then it froze when trying
to set the system clock from the hardware clock.  Perhaps "froze" is to
strong a word, since characters were still echoed on the console from
the keyboard.

The system has an intel ICH6 chip (82801FB) and a P4 chip with
Hyperthreading.  The same thing happened with noapic nolapic boot
parameters passed.

Has anyone else come across this?

Patrick