Comment 41 for bug 761830

The real bug here is not so much that grub is asking the kernel to switch to vt7 when there is no splash. The real bug is that grub is requesting a vt switch at all. Grub has no business making this request because it has no way of knowing whether there is anything on vt7.

The way this should work, and the way it used to work, is that the post-grub application (splash, X, gdm, or /bin/login) would request a vt switch to itself (or not, in the case of /bin/login, which runs on all vts). Only the application running on a particular vt can know which vt should be switched to, and the switch shouldn't happen until that app is up and running.

Please don't lecture me about kms and how the current way of doing things is so much better than ums. I know about that. The kernel does vt switches at the request of user space programs. That part hasn't changed. The vt switch request should be a "pull" to the program requesting the vt, not a "push" from some program (like grub) that hopes and prays there is someone home on the target vt.

And by the way, VirtualBox on Mac does not pass Alt-F1 to the guest OS by default. That's not really relevant to this bug except that it tends to raise the frustration factor for those of us trying to deal with it. Except for this grub bug I would never have any need to switch vt on my ubuntu VM install.