How do I get Ctrl+Alt+F* virtual terminals to work in Ubuntu 12.04?

Question

I know that the Ctrl+Alt+F* shortcuts go to virtual terminals. This worked fine up through 11.10. But in 12.04, all I get is a blank screen when using a Ctrl+Alt+F* shortcut; I can still go back to my X session, though, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7. What is malfunctioning?

These work for me in 12.04, so it sounds like you might be experiencing a bug. Do you notice anything interesting in your logs when you attempt to load one of these sessions? — adempewolff, Jun 07 '12 at 04:49
When you get the blank screen, press any key...something happen? — ish, Jun 07 '12 at 04:51
@izx Nothing appears to happen when I press keys in the blank screen. — Gregory Gauthier, Jun 07 '12 at 04:52
in /etc/default/grub, add option text to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and run sudo update-grub and reboot.
This should boot you into a console - tty1. Can you switch between terminals from there? If yes, run startx from tty1 to enter the desktop environment, and from there, see if the shortcut keys work. — ish, Jun 07 '12 at 04:56
@izx When I try to add "text" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" and run sudo update-grub I get the message /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig: 11: /etc/default/grub: text: not found — Gregory Gauthier, Jun 07 '12 at 05:04
@izx The Ctrl+Alt+F* keys work when I manually start X; however, Unity doesn't start. — Gregory Gauthier, Jun 07 '12 at 05:43
Sorry about the delay; I went to bed. I also discovered that, although I am invited to turn the comments thread into a chat, I cannot send any chat messages until I have 20 reputation. — Gregory Gauthier, Jun 07 '12 at 15:25
I guess this post would solve your problem: http://askubuntu.com/questions/162535/why-does-switching-to-the-tty-give-me-a-blank-screen — Yifan Sun, Sep 18 '14 at 16:18

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 07 '13 at 21:41

I meet the same problem after update from 10.04 to 12.04. It is the problem of your video card driver. In my situation, after the update, the driver has been disabled and replaced by sth different. Go to the 'system setting', find the 'additional drivers', check if the correct video card driver is activated.

How do I get Ctrl+Alt+F* virtual terminals to work in Ubuntu 12.04?

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