Used Ctrl-Alt-F6 in Linux, and can't get my screen back
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/120296
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This is obviously a stupid question. I am coding in Eclipse both on Mac and Linux, but I mixed up and used the Mac shortcut to window tabbing (Ctrl-Cmd-F6), but I was using the Linux on uni and screen went black. I've done this before, but this time I can't get back to my desktop. Ctrl-Alt F1-F6 gives me different terminals, F7 gives me a black screen and F8 a blinking underscore in the top left corner. Shouldn't my session have been somewhere in F1-F6 and is it lost?
Solution
X is probably still running on F7, your display driver (or something else) is just misbehaving. You might be able to trick it into coming back on by going to F7 and blindly opening a terminal and playing with xset ($ xset dpms force on). Or you can ctrl-alt-backspace to kill X and GDM should restart it.
Try seeing if you can repeat the problem and then file a bug report (or let the lab admin know if it isn't your computer). It probably has something to do with your distro's kernel configuration/patching. I've had this happen before on Ubuntu but not any other distros (I've used many), which is why I am assuming it might be distro-specific issue. Probably the unintended consequences of some kernel patching.
OTHER TIPS
Ctrl-Alt-F7 should work perhaps your X has crashed?
I just did what you did and F7 got it back for me, saying that before I remember X crashing and I had the same black screen
The ctrl+alt+Fx (x=1..6) key combinations often allow you to have up to 6 concurrent terminal sessions on the console. Usually one is setup to use X windows, and differs from distribution to distribution. Typically its on Ctrl+Alt+F7.
http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie5_1.htm
Some distributions of Linux allow you to kill the X Windows session with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace at which point the operating system will attempt to restart it.
I had the same issue. I tried with hitting ctl+ alt + F1 together. And it worked
In the future, you can go into a terminal and type:
init 3
To bring the system into text mode, and:
init 5
To return the system to X mode. The nice thing about doing it that way is that everything should be shut down and restarted cleanly.
Try Ctrl-Alt-F9, and Ctrl-Alt-F10. :-)
Looks like X crashed. To check, you could log in on one of the terminals (on Ctrl+F1 etc.) and check that the "X" process is still running.
I've had the same happen to me recently, and found the SIGSEGV and backtrace later in /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Curse your graphics driver vendor (usually) and then reboot.
We're running gnome on Red Hat 5. ps axu in one of the other terminals showed some of the processes still running. Probably something with the display drivers then. Did ctrl-alt-backspace and restarted it. Thanks for the help.
F8 solves the problem in Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa
For My case. I tried with hitting
ctl+ alt + F2
together. And it worked in Fedora
