Installing Ubuntu on Hyper-V

Okay, I was able to install Ubuntu 6.06.2 on a Hyper-V virtual machine. Ubuntu 7.10 simply remains with a blank screen at startup. So does Open SUSE 10.2, but this 6.06.2 Ubuntu server installed with a little bit of tweaking.

Before beginning installation, you have to remove the default Network card that is added during the initial setup of the virtual machine, and add a 'Legacy Network Card'. That is, if you want network connectivity. 

There are many variations of Ubuntu, even the same version has various distributions. The version I downloaded had a VGA (F4) option on the installation menu which can be used to set the installation to VGA 640x480 mode. This is the biggest problem during installation; setting the display to 640x480.

Hard disk partitioning seemed to fail on the first run, but on second try installation went smooth. Ubuntu on Virtual Server had an issue of not being able to detect the Virtual CD/DVD Drive, which is not there on Hyper-V, at least with this version of Ubuntu.

After installation, though, Ubuntu boots with incompatible display settings and characters are pushed down the console and I could not see the command prompt. Rebooting in 'recovey mode' got me on the console with root access. Now all I have to do is set the display to 640x480 and everything should be fine.

From various sources and blogs on the net it appears that I need to modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to change the display settings of Ubuntu, and for some reason, I can't find it!

Is it because it is the server version of Ubuntu?

Lets hope that with a little bit more research, I will be able to figure this out soon.

If you do not have the integration services installed, the Release Candidate of Hyper-V won't capture mouse on Hyper-V connections over a remote desktop, since it does not work anyways. The only server I have with Hyper-V at this moment is in a Datacenter and I can only access it with a remote desktop. This leaves me with only the keyboard to work with. Installing and subsequently working with Fedora with only keyboard was quite an adventure! 

Installing Ubuntu was much faster than installing Fedora 8!