How can I end the GUI from a different TTY, then start up a new one.
This is for the occasional freeze of the GUI, or inaccessibility. When all I can do is switch to another TTY (using Ctrl+Alt+F5 for TTY5) and start over, or reboot.
If X is hung, you should be able rejigger it by restarting the display manager. In 11.10, it's lightdm, recent past versions use gdm. Change the following examples as appropriate for your version. You can restart it a few different ways. I prefer the simplicity of the restart
:
sudo restart gdm
Or you can use the service
command:
sudo service gdm restart
Init script hackers stuck on sysv will prefer invoke-rc.d
:
sudo invoke-rc.d gdm restart
If restarting the display manager doesn't work, pull out a hammer and kill it dead with one or both of these commands:
sudo pkill -9 X
sudo pkill -9 gdm
Use the first one. restart
is a link to initctl
, which is Upstart, which is Ubuntu's init manager that they are trying to convert everything over to.
The other two commands, service
and invoke-rc.d
are there only to control the old-style SysV init scripts. SysV exists in modern Ubuntu only for backwards compatibility. Don't rely on it. But if you must..
service
is for end-users. It returns a simple exit code. If you're a normal user needing to control a SysV style init script, use this tool.
invoke-rc.d
is for init script hackers. It returns a bunch of varied and useful exit codes. There's no reason a normal user should use this tool. There isn't any harm for normal users, it's just more complicated.
I found a much easier way to restart the GUI.
In most cases you can just use: Alt+PrintScreen+K
Try invoke-rc.d gdm restart
as root.
service
.
If CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE doesn't end the current X server and plop you back in lightdm or gdm then there is an alternate sequence (which I've personally never tried) that goes like this: ALT+PrintScreen+R-E-I-S-U-B, however this will actually reboot the machine. My preferred method is to just CTRL+ALT+F1 to get to a terminal and then sudo service gdm restart
and that will also bring you back to the login screen
service
is great though.