[9fans] vmware installation problems

[roger peppe <rogpeppe@gmail.com>]

i'm trying to install plan 9 under vmware (2.0.5 this time, having
failed with 1.0),
and it all worked fine (fossil + venti installation, 8GB disk, all
defaults, rebooted fine,
waited for venti to calm down, fshalt), except that when i came to reboot,
i got i/o errors as it was booting - here are some messages from the console:

init: starting /bin/rc
ndb/dns: can't read my ip address
2009/0728 00:53:27 err 4: write /dev/sdC0/isect offset 0xb0a4000 count
65536 buf 1dc6000 returned -1: i/o error
/boot/venti: part /dev/sdC0/isect addr 0xaf24000: icachewritesect
writepart: write /dev/sdC0/isect offset 0xb0a4000 count 65536 buf
1dc6000 returned -1: i/o error

there was then a long pause and then i got lots and lots more i/o
error messages, and it failed to boot.

initially, i thought that this was a one-off accident, so i
reinstalled everything
from scratch... and got exactly the same errors (with different addr
and offset).

someone else tried almost exactly the same thing (latest iso, md5:
d65178d8d8870c1488c64bc5ad8cdca8),
mac os, vmware fusion 2.0.0, and had no problems.

any ideas, anyone?