Text whizzing by too fast

[utu]

I hope you all will be patient with me, for I am a slow learner.

You have helped me find the material I'm after. Now I need to
figure out how to apply it. I know how, in principle to proceed
to establish a file to read. I've seen a few ideas on how to
achieve a virtual terminal, but I've not mastered that yet.

I lost a few hours being disconnected, by the unfortunate choice
of Fn-F2 on my laptop keyboard. I was attempting to establish
what, if anything, happened with a whole lot of key combinations.
I Thought my wifi or router had died.

Many thanks to you all. My cup runneth over.

klaus2008, I'm very interested to try what you suggest.
I will now re-apply myself to the virtual terminal problem;
once I get over that hump, I'll get back to you.

[utu]

Progress:

In an lxterminal either as knoppix or root,
ctl-alt-F2 gets a virtual terminal (I don't know which one).
alt-F12 then takes you to virtual terminal #12 (vt #12).
vt #12 displays the last 46 lines of the grey-on-black diary.
From vt #12, alt-F5 then takes you back to your X-session.

Note: The previous is true in my Knoppix 6.2.1, with my
Inspiron 1545 keyboard, but not in Ubuntu 10.04 on another
computer.

Musings:

I am guessing that the diary which may have existed on prior
screens probably went to /dev/null, and isn't retrievable.

I don't know how to pre-arrange for an lxterm to be active
to see this stuff from the get-go.

I suspect a well-placed tee command might capture this
lost material in a logfile for later viewing.

[utu]

@klaus2008, specifically in regard to your post #15.

I think I'm ready to try your idea.

Am I permanently modifying any files with your long command,
or will the change only persist for the immediate session?

If any files are permanently changed, which are they?

Also, I might add to my previous observations,
1. The first virtual terminal seems like it should be vt #5.
2. It is possible to enter 'ctl-alt-F2' during the start-up
sequence without firing up any lxterm. In one instance,
this allowed viewing earlier progress of start-up, but it also
stalled some of Network Manager magic. This magic resumed
successfully as soon as I returned to Xsession.