TIP: Disable Ubuntu frame buffer (useful for Hyper-V)

[Prerequisites]
No knowledge of Ubuntu is necessary to use this tip.
This tip has been tested on Ubuntu Server 10.04 x64 and Hyper-V 2008 R2.


[General]
Most who has tried installing Linux-distributions on Hyper-V know that installing and working in console mode can be almost unbearable. I our Hyper-V system i get 5-7 seconds of delay for each dialog during the installation of Ubuntu and every line of text can take a second or more to print.
The feature causing this problem is the frame buffer, it's job is to create some interesting possibilities with the display. It's a fair guess that slowing it down to glacier speed wasn't supposed to be one of them.

To solve this in Ubuntu is actually really simple, you just have to know where to look.

Fixing the problem in the installer
When you boot the Ubuntu Server install disc you first select your language and you are then presented with several options, the first being "Install Ubuntu Server".
If you look in the lower left corner you will see "F6 Other Options". Go ahead and press F6 and then press escape to close the menu that opens up.
You will now see a line of text that was hidden before, it is actually the command to boot the installer and it ends with "quiet --".
Your cursor will be at the end of the line already so go ahead and add a space and then type "vga16fb.modeset=0" without the quotes and press enter.

You should see the usual Ubuntu installer but greatly enhanced in speed.

Fixing the problem permanently

The kernel boot option we added during the install will actually be added to grub and run every time the system boots. But for some reason it gives an error saying modeset doesn't exist. It still works, you will see a lot better performance, but i really hate boot errors, benign or not.

So to fix this permanently, the easiest thing we can do is just blacklist the entire module.

Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf with your favorite text editor. At the bottom, add "blacklist vga16fb" without the quotes, then run sudo update-initramfs -u and reboot.

The error should be gone.

Feel free to ask any questions or add comments regarding this post in the comments. I'll try and answer best i can, promise. Cheers