How to get back into 12.04 desktop for terminal

Does anyone know how to get back to the desktop from the command prompt?
My system randomly freezes and one work around I saw was to
CTL-ALT-F1 then login
sudo pkill compiz-decorator
pkill -9 compiz
(I have tried CTL-ALT-F1 but not the above commands yet)
?????? Thank You, J

 

Your X session is usually on 7 or 8th virtual terminal, so it would be ALT+F7 or F8. You only need CTRL + ALT + Fx to break out of an X session, to go the other way into X, CTRL isn't needed.

If your desktop is freezing, check out your ~/.xsession-errors log file. An easy way to look at the end of the file is:

Code:

less +G ~/.xsession-errors

The +G tells it to start at the end of the file as opposed to the beginning. So you scroll up to go backwards in the log, it's useful for looking at the end of files like logs. Hit the q key to close less.

If your desktop session is crashing hard, not just your window manager, you can relaunch your session with:

Code:

sudo invoke-rc.d gdm3 restart

 

Thanks a lot Allur, I did not want to do stuff as root and destroy my install! + 1 of course.
As an aside it seems that I am not alone with 12.04 freezes,
Now I am going to try the suggestion in post 328 here, it will be good learning if nothing else. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/993187
I guess I better create an image first ! When you create images is there any need to include the swap partition? I can post my present disk manager screen shot if needed (I am dual booting Vista/ 12.04.

 

You don't need to make an image if you are only installing a new kernel.

As long as you don't uninstall the old kernel, it will be right in your boot menu if you need to go back to it, there is no real risk involved.

But no, don't bother with imaging a swap partition.

 

After you CTRL ALT F1 & login:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm stop
sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm start

This will close your previous x session & should bring you back to your default desktop as you are already logged in (it does for me on Debian Testing) - this is also useful for updating xorg or video drivers.

 

Oh, right. 12.04 uses lightdm by default, not gdm. You can replace the two commands with just one using restart instead of stop and start.

 

Thanks itoffshore and ALLUR, lucky the kernel rollback had made my system ROCK stable. so I have not needed to login from terminal.
Other than a problem after I installed Jupiter (fixed by a system restore with REDO - excellent simple imaging program BTW) I am ready to upgrade my ASUS to Ubuntu next!