crtl+alt+F3...Now what?

[Irish1]

So I pressed ctrl+alt+F3 and now my whole system is basically one big terminal - black screen and only accepts terminal commands. How do I go back to the 'normal' Ubuntu desktop screen? Rebooting only takes me back to the terminal command page described above. I can access root commands with sudo bash and my password, if fact all terminal commands seem to work. Is there a command I can use to go back to the regular desktop?

[egan]

This is called a tty, a virtual terminal into which you can log in. They are accessed by typing Alt F1 through Alt F12. Adding control makes it "go through" your X-Windows session, which is located on tty7. To go back, press Alt F7.

[Irish1]

How do you get to tty7, I can only get up to tty6?

[Kieren]

Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 all at the same time

[Kieren]

Oh, it looks as if your desktop isn't working for whatever reason. Have you done anything that could have broken it?

[reed9]

If CTRL+ALT+F7 isn't bringing you back to the desktop, you can restart the session with

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

[Irish1]

crtl+alt+F7 doesn't do anything, as in there is absolutely no response. Any other suggstions?

[Kieren]

Have you tried entering reed9's command into your tty session? Has that helped or given any errors?

[Irish1]

I haven't tried that suggestion yet, I just got to work and will have to wait until I get home again. I will try though, I really don't want to have to reinstall Ubuntu 9.10 all over again and lose everything, mainly codecs and such even though I know I can get them easily enough, it will just be time consuming.

Thanks for all of your help, I will the suggestion in about 7.5 hours.

[Kieren]

Just so you know you can get most codecs and restricted formats by installing ubuntu-restricted-extras:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

This will install support for things such as Java, Flash and MP3 among other things