The latest apt-get upgrade on my board running Focal updated all but two (described below) of the following packages:

 

armbian-firmware armbian-focal-desktop-xfce armbian-zsh bluez bluez-obexd
libbluetooth3 libnss-myhostname libpam-systemd libsecret-1-0
libsecret-common libsmbclient libsystemd0 libudev1 libwbclient0
linux-dtb-current-meson64 linux-image-current-meson64 linux-libc-dev
linux-u-boot-odroidc4-current python3-samba samba samba-common
samba-common-bin samba-libs smbclient systemdsystemd-sysv udev

 

This generated a new initramfs and uboot updates so I rebooted afterwards to make sure everything was ok.  Now, the

Light Display Manager has a "failed to start" message and it prompts to see "systemctl status lightdm.service'.

The output from that command is reproduced here: http://ix.io/3qc2 .  (It tries to start the service five times and then gives up

and gives the command-line login only).

 

When I try to run

$ sudo apt-get update

again, the output now shows that :

armbian-config and linux-focal-root-current-odroidc4

have been kept back.

 

Any suggestions on how to get that glorious desktop happening again?

 

I'm trying to get more experience with C, systems programming, drivers, scripting, (also interested in the Berkeley

Software Distributions, have a working Linux From Scratch built [but haven't delved into

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/ much yet], have compiled a couple kernels with Gentoo, and have done some

hobbyist work w/ assembly programming).
 

In short, I like this project and want to contribute after improving my skillset more and (also getting more freetime) --  but my system stubbed

its toe on this latest update. should I revert (somehow) to an earlier version of a package?  (I'm not sure which one or ones from that list

of updates goofed the lightdm service up.)

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Just a follow-up for anyone that encounters a similar problem...

 

I got the display manager to work again after searching for "Lightdm fails to start" and found this link from the Manjaro forums:

https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/solved-lightdm-fails-to-start/27058

and this Ubuntu page on LightDM:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LightDM

 

At the command prompt I ran:

 

sudo lightdm –-test-mode --debug

and saw that the LightDM "greeter" wasn't being found (the apt-get upgrade seemed to have changed some config).

 

From the "Changing the Greeter" section of the Ubuntu page I saw that my

 

/usr/share/xgreeters

directory contained two files:

lightdm-greeter.desktop (a link to /etc/alternatives/lightdm-greeter) and

lightdm-gtk-greeter.desktop

 

From the Ubuntu page I created a file /etc/lightdm/lighdm.conf (with rw privileges for root and world-readable mode; e.g., -rw-r--r-- mode)

which consists of only:

 

# lightdm.conf - I put in some comments about it being my hack-work
# (another example comment line)
[Seat:*]
greeter-session=lightdm-greeter

 

I then rebooted and the graphical interface is working again. ^_^