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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?

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axiopisty
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    The question you linked answers this. – psusi Apr 04 '14 at 21:46
  • "Ctrl + Alt + F7" should get you back to the GUI if it doesn't you have found a bug [Report it on Launchpad](http://askubuntu.com/q/5121/107450) – 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

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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.

ubfan1
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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.

David Oneill
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