n0ukf wrote:I was editing a text document when suddenly the screen just went blank (black but still backlit).
Did you later find that your Ctrl-s worked?n0ukf wrote:. . . tried ctrl-s in case Geany uses that to save the current file, don't know yet if that took. but no change in the screen . . .
If it did work, then geany still had keyboard focus, and the remainder of this post doesn't apply to this case.
If it didn't work, it is possible that you may have somehow been switched to another virtual console. Some virtual consoles in Puppy have login prompts or other text, but some are blank and backlit as you described. (You may see a single blinking cursor.) For instance, if you meant to press Ctrl+Shift+F9 but accidently pressed Ctrl+Alt+F9, you would end up in virtual console 9.
The Puppies that I have used all run X on virtual console 4. So if you find yourself out in the cold, pressing Ctrl+Alt+F4 should get you back. (Other distros (and possibly other Puppies?) may run X elsewhere, such as virtual console 2 or 6.)
Of course, there are many other possibilities, like X may have crashed without restoring the video registers to allow viewing the test console. If that is the case, not much will help, except restarting X as Dewbie explained above -- also, you might need to press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get back to virtual console 1 before typing xwin.
