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I was trying to learn how TTY's (teletypes or virtual terminals) in Ubuntu 18.04 work, so I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1 , and the Login screen showed. According to the post " How do I switch between console mode and GUI in 17.10 and newer? ", I sould be able to return to GUI by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 . However, that did not work and nothing happened.

Keep in mind that, after pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, what the corresponding Login Screen showed was a black screen with around 20 lines of white text, and with a blinking cursor at the bottom of the last line of text.

I then tried to switch to TTY3, TTY4, TTY5, TTY6 or TTY7, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3-7 ; however, none of that worked and nothing happened. The screen kept showing the Login Screen, with the same white text and the blinking cursor.

I finally had to use the REISUB method to restart my PC. This is the second time I launch TTY1 and something similar happened on the first one.

Edit:
I cannot type anything onto that TTY1. The cursor blinks but when I press any key from the alphabet, nothing shows up.
Regarding the white text I mentioned, the first time the problem happened, the screen showed very similar text to the text showed the second time the problem happened, with only few numbers changed. One of those changes is a different number in the fourth line, right after 'inode'. A transcription is as follows :

/dev/sdb2: clearing orphaned inode 4719982 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, si
/dev/sdb2: clearing orphaned inode 4718655 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, si
/dev/sdb2: clearing orphaned inode 4725500 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, si
/dev/sdb2: clearing orphaned inode 4719982 (uid=121, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size
/dev/sdb2: clean, 544187/7299072 files, 9720508/29173760 blocks

[OK] started LSB: automatic crash report generation.
[OK] started LSB: record successful boot for Grub. [OK] Created slice User Slice of gdm.
Starting User Manager for UID 121...
[OK] Started Session c1 of user gdm.
(there are more lines here in the middle, which I can transcribe if people ask for it)
[OK] Started Thunderbolt system service.
[OK] Started PackageKit Daemon.

So, why can't I exit from TTY1?
How can I fix this?

evaristegd
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1 Answers1

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Toggle function-keys pressing "F-Lock"
Stumpling right into the same problem, I've found the reason for - at least - my problem: Using a ms natural 4000 keyboard sometimes requires to toggle the Function-keys pressing "F-Lock"-key located next to F12.

(Toggling the Function-Key's might help with that type of keyboard too if you don't get hardcopies etc...)

Reference

As a workaround, ssh could be used to connect to server and kill user's session to see if system will automatically redirect you to your DM. Or reboot in soft way.

Gryu
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