Ubuntu – How to increase the number of TTY consoles

command lineconsolettyvirtual-console

I often find it convenient to work entirely from the command line, and like to have several tty "consoles" open simultaneously.

How do I make my system default to having more than the traditional 6 tty consoles (CTRL-ALT-Fn)?

Also with the transition to SystemD and Gnome, has the tty console number actually drop? I seem to struggle sometimes opening even one, let alone several, and often end up with a behavior in which several (CTRL-ALT-Fn) combinations all lead to a GUI rather than a tty.

I am running a combo of Ubuntu 18.04 and 18.10 across several machines, if it matters.

Best Answer

Before answering your question, I would rather point you to use something like screen or tmux.

But if you insist on using ttys, you can spawn a new one with:

sudo systemctl start getty@ttyN.service

with N being a number not already in use.

You could change the default number of ttys started at boot (6) to something else by editing /etc/systemd/logind.conf and uncommenting the first line and change the number 6 to something else like:

[Login]
NAutoVTs=7

Source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Getty