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After booting to the GUI in 12.04, I attempt to move to the virtual terminal (or shell, or tty) via Ctrl-Alt-F1 (F1 through F6), and the screen remains blank. I have tried all 6 tty instances and the results are the same. Ctrl-alt-F7 brings me back to the GUI without a problem. Any thoughts?

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This occurs often together with being unable to see Grub of the boot splash. Can you see those? – hexafraction Jul 11 '12 at 20:11
up vote 59 down vote accepted

This is usually caused because the graphical text-mode resolution set at boot up is not compatible with your video card. The solution is to switch to true text-mode by configuring Grub appropriately:

  1. Open the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T

  2. Paste the below, and enter your password when asked:

    sudo sed -i -e 's/#GRUB_TERMINAL/GRUB_TERMINAL/g' /etc/default/grub

  3. Then type sudo update-grub

  4. Reboot and the virtual terminals should now work.
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1  
Unfortunately, this didn't help with my graphic-driver issues (I need the X server down to install proper drivers, but the lack of drivers prevents me from getting a working command-line with ctrl-alt-F1). – Jonathan Y. Feb 1 '15 at 20:34
7  
CAREFUL, this thing has completely messed up my grub, I don't see a boot menu anymore. (Ubuntu 15.04) – Arty Oct 25 '15 at 3:21
1  
Doesn't work on 14.0.4 for me – Zach Rattner May 17 '16 at 1:57
1  
Hey @izx, I followed your steps. But the problem hasn't been solved yet. I got a black and white grub. But the terminals are black. actually, whenever the swap fills up, be it even a byte. My terminals go black. I am able to type on them. I just did chvt 2 and logged in to that blcak terminal and executed sudo reboot and it worked. The problem is with the display only. My problem askubuntu.com/questions/876982/… – Logan Jan 28 '17 at 17:04
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Grub file states # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) #GRUB_TERMINAL=console Why would disabling graphical terminal fix this issue? For Ubuntu 16.04 – Sun Bear Mar 10 '17 at 17:56
up vote 15 down vote

What fixed this for me was adding nomodeset to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in the /etc/default/grub file. Here's how:

  1. Type in terminal: gksu gedit /etc/default/grub

  2. Search for this line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT

    So for example if you have:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash usbcore.autosuspend=-1"

    change it to:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash usbcore.autosuspend=-1 nomodeset"

  3. After you finish, update grub (sudo update-grub) and reboot (sudo reboot) for the changes to take effect.

Optional: You could add nomodeset vga=xxx (not just nomodeset), the xxx is a VESA screen code that best matches your screen resolution. Take a look at this.

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Worked for me. Be sure to read the last paragraph above, about running sudo update-grub to apply the changes. – Andy Thomas Mar 18 '16 at 20:44
    
Worked for me on 14.0.4 – Zach Rattner May 17 '16 at 1:58
1  
When I do this with 14.04 and some Hardware enabling stack whatever this works technically, but graphical desktop is not booted into nor does startx work. But the terminal is back. – hakre Sep 16 '16 at 16:10
    
For me On Ubuntu 16.04 this caused my HDMI-VGA monitor to completely stop working. – Padraic Cunningham Dec 22 '16 at 17:21
    
@PadraicCunningham you can undo it from tty. I hope it wasn't too much trouble – Mina Michael Dec 22 '16 at 20:49
up vote 3 down vote

This is for newer version of Ubuntu:

  1. Edit the GRUB configuration file:

    sudo nano /etc/default/grub

  2. Locate the line 

    #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

    change it to

    GRUB_GFXMODE=auto

    and save the file.

  3. Then update grub

    sudo update-grub
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up vote 1 down vote

Please take a look at my question at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/643882, with regards to virtual terminal not functioning on Ubuntu 16.04 on Lenovo Thinkpad T400.

The solution i presented is geared towards user with Hybrid Graphics Card, in particular, AMD/ATI graphics card and Intel integrated graphics card. For me, disabling the intel graphics card and enabling the opensource ATI/AMD radeon module helps in my case.

If you are using a old Radeon graphics card like mine (Radeon HD 3450/3470), now you can switch between virtual terminal and graphical desktop with ease to troubleshoot potential issues.

If adding blacklist intel_graphics_card in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and running 

sudo depmod -a

still doesn't work due to linux kernel or other dependencies, you are advised to add modprobe.blacklist=<module_name> to /etc/default/grub like the following example:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash crashkernel=384M-:128M radeon.dpm=1  modprobe.blacklist=i915"
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up vote 0 down vote

You need to shut down the graphics driver after you Ctrl+Alt+F1 before you try to install the Nvidia driver

As in sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm stop

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2  
"before you try to install the Nvidia driver" - I'm not sure what you mean by that. The question doesn't mention anything about Nvidia drivers. – wjandrea Oct 2 '17 at 18:20

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