How to change back to the console when stucked by the desktop environment

[Charles W. Ross]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016, at 08:56, Yubin Ruan wrote:
> Hi,
> I just tried FreeBSD-10.3 stable and get stuck when trying to use the 
> Mate desktop environment. I use Slim as the login manager. But when I 
> try to login, with correct username and passwd, Slim tell me that
>      "Failed to execute login command"
> (Any idea why would that happen?)

This error message means that whatever you have in your .xinitrc file is
wrong. For example, to start the the OpenBox window manager, you would
include 'exec openbox-session' in your .xinitrc. This varies based on
the window manager you want to use.

> So I try to switch back to the console use "Alt-F1...Alt-F8", which is 
> suggested by the doc. But that doesn't work. Why ?

The correct key combination to get back to a console is "CTRL + ALT +
F1" (through F8), not just ALT by itself.

> 
> How can I switch back to the console to tune the system?
> 
> Regards,
> Ruan

Hope this helps,

Charlie