Is a reboot the only way to get back into the GUI after pressing "CTRL+ALT+F12"?

Question

I just read What does "Ctrl + Alt + F12" do?. It was helpful, but I'm left with the question:

If you accidentally press "CTRL+ALT+F12" is the only way out of the virtual terminal to reboot the machine?

I tried every combination of (CTRL, CTRL+ALT, CTRL+SHIFT, CTRL+ALT+SHIFT, ALT, ALT+SHIFT, SHIFT) + each of the F1-12 keys to try and get back to the GUI. Nothing worked. Is the only way back into the GUI to reboot the machine?

"Ctrl + Alt + F7" should get you back to the GUI if it doesn't you have found a bug Report it on Launchpad — Warren Hill, Apr 05 '14 at 09:33
I disagree that this is a duplicate of the question linked to in the post. They ask similar, but different questions. That one asks what the keyboard shortcut does. This one asks specifically how to recover from it. And "Ctrl+Alt+F7" didn't get back into the GUI. — axiopisty, Apr 07 '14 at 17:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 04 '14 at 22:12

Once you switch to a virtual "terminal" without a getty running, your keyboard input is not available, so trying to use it to switch back is useless. Come into your system via ssh, and kill the lightdm --session.... to get back to an X login screen.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '14 at 21:29

0

Ctrl+Alt+F7 should get you back to the GUI. (I just tested this on xubuntu 12.04)

Specifically, I hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to the first terminal, then Ctrl+Alt+F7, which brings me back to the GUI.

answered Apr 04 '14 at 21:29

David Oneill

12,144

Should that work on Linux mint? It didn't work for me. – axiopisty Apr 04 '14 at 21:31
Hmm - I would assume it would work there, although I don't know for sure. What happens when you hit CtrlAltF1? Does it bring up a mostly black screen with a login prompt? – David Oneill Apr 04 '14 at 21:32
Regardless of which combination I try, none of them work. I've tried them all. – axiopisty Apr 04 '14 at 21:33
You may find that Mint (the mdm display manager) uses tty8 instead of tty7 i.e. you need to use Ctrl-Alt-F8 – steeldriver Apr 04 '14 at 23:20
2

@axiopisty Mint is based on Ubuntu but its not the same ask on the Mint Forums – Warren Hill Apr 05 '14 at 09:45

Is a reboot the only way to get back into the GUI after pressing "CTRL+ALT+F12"?

2 Answers2