How to remove bottom information panel in terminal window on Ubuntu Server AMI images?

The Amazon AMI images have a default information panel at the bottom of the terminal window. I would like to remove this (it disables me from being able to scroll backwards in putty).

It looks like this at the bottom of my terminal window:

0*$ sh  [email protected] 100.10.100.10 ...
 U  Ubuntu oneiric            1# 3d20h 0.00 2.6GHz 592MB,43% 2011-09-26 18:12:05

Unfortunately, the 11.10 AMIs automatically run the screen command on ssh from a terminal using a package named byobu which uses up the bottom two lines with colorful line noise.

You can disable this on a given instance by typing the command:

byobu-disable

which will log you out. The next ssh will work fine.

Note: This post includes statements that express my personal opinions. Other people have different opinions.

When you launch an instance in EC2 you have the option of supplying "user data" which is available to the instance at first boot (and later.) Ubuntu consumes the user data with a program called cloud-init, which is incredibly powerful.

You can disable byobu using the user-friendly cloud-config feature of cloud-init.

To disable byobu all you have to do is supply this two-line user data:

#cloud-config
byobu_by_default: disable

Full details about cloud-init here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CloudInit

Cloud-config syntax, including all the other amazing things you can do with it, here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~cloud-init-dev/cloud-init/trunk/view/head:/doc/examples/cloud-config.txt

If scrolling is what you're looking for in Byobu, use the key combinations:

Alt-PgUp

and

Alt-PgDn

Just use sudo apt-get remove screen

done!