Hello.
I got plan9 running in vmware server some days ago.
I ran into the same (and many other) problem as you.
As I remember the problem is the virtual IDE CD-drive. Turn it off or switch it to SCSI.

-Patrick Kristiansen.

On 6/16/07, john@csplan9.rit.edu <john@csplan9.rit.edu> wrote:
Okay, I don't particularly like to drag up an old topic, but I can't
seem to find anything really helpful in the archives.
I just downloaded VMWare Server and the latest Plan 9 ISO,
and with the help of "echo hwaccel off > /dev/vgactl" I was
able to install Plan 9. However, when I try to boot the machine
from the hard drive image, nothing seems to happen after
"init: starting /bin/rc". When I try to specify root from tcp,
everything stops after I've entered the username. Now, this
last part could be simply because I have not correctly configured
my CPU/auth server; if somebody could help me figure that out,
I'd be obliged.

So, any suggestions? I'd really prefer to boot it using my remote
fileserver for root. Please no "Just get a real computer" replies,
because I'm very short on room and currently unable to
mess with the laptop I'm using. I've tried running in qemu
under Windows, it's far from ideal.

Thanks

John