Whilst in KDE gui I pressed ctrl+alt+f2 out of curiosity. I then pressed crtl+alt+f7 to return to the gui, the computer froze so I shutdown using the power button.

So the result is I have a different konsole profile (it has very different preferences e.g. font etc) and using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt+t opens konsole in the / directory. If I open it through the KDE menu it opens in my home dierctory, but the profile is still incorrect.

echo $HOME returns /home/mik correctly.

How do I get back to where I was before I pressed ctrl+alt+f2?

To return to the GUI, you should use Ctrl+Alt+F1, Ctrl+Alt+F7 leaves you are a blank screen, Ctrl+Alt+F1. This behavior change awhile back.

I guess you assigned this Ctrl_Alt-t shortcut to open Konsole, I don't see any assignments for Konsole in settings.
Correction, it seems that this is indeed a default shortcut to open Konsole. I've been using KDE for so long that this never got picked up in my profile. At one time there was no shortcut to Konsole, there is now.

You can check your Konsole profile, pehaps something was changed. I used all of the key combinations here, no issues.

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Thanks chrisretusn.

I have deleted my konsole profile and added another one, which has solved the problem.

However, if I use the default profile the problem persists.

I will mark this as solved as I have a profile which opens in /home/mik when using Ctrl+Alt+t.

I would choose another terminal emulator than console, where it is easier to configure to run as a "login shell". Yes, this is possible to configure also with konsole, but then you might have to edit the line where your shell is being called and add a switch "-l" to that line.

regards Henrik

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Wonder if the KDE Team wouldn't like to know that?

You could try reinstalling Konsole.

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Most likely the problems come from settings in the users home directory. If willing to sacrifice all settings, it might help to rename or remove ~/.kde or ~/.config

regards Henrik

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That's a bit drastic. The reason I recommended @amikoyan reinstall Konsole is because he stated it happens when he uses the default profile, which I take to be the "build-in (Read-only)" profile.

If I misread what @amikoyan said and it was a profile he has set as default then it could be as simple as editing that profile and checking the the "Initial directory" location. BTW, the configuration file for added profiles is stored in ~/.local/share/konsole/.

To clarify, the issue is with the default read-only profile.

I have created a custom profile which works fine. The default profile continues to open in / directory

So this seems to be an example of how an unclean shutdown corrupts system files, then comes the question which more files got corrupted?

I usually split up my file system in different partitions. I try to keep the root partition small, but during the last years it has become rather bloated with all those firmware files. A small root partition is less likely to get corrupted during unclean shutdown.

Partitions like /usr and /opt are big, but as not much writing happens on those partitions they are still rather unlikely to get corrupted during an unclean shutdown.

There is a lot of writing going on to /var and /tmp, but even if files on those partitions get corrupted, many of those files are not very important.

regard Henrik