I'm successfully able to compile Armbian with the 4.17 kernel, Ubuntu Bionic and desktop support for my Orange Pi Plus 2E (H3). But I'm trying to switch from the default nodm display manager to lightdm.

I was actually able to install lightdm using lib.config the customize-image.sh script (see here), but then the wizard complains that I have to choose between nodm and lightdm. Then I discovered there's a  DISPLAY_MANAGER env variable that I can pass into compile which seems like a better solution. Unfortunately that consistently breaks:

Unpacking libpython-stdlib:armhf (2.7.15~rc1-1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
/tmp/apt-dpkg-install-GgFLat/090-humanity-icon-theme_0.6.15_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
[ error ] ERROR in function create_rootfs_cache [ debootstrap-ng.sh:213 ]
[ error ] Installation of Armbian packages failed

 

Any idea what the problem is?

Mmm, spoke too soon. I'm getting the same error without this change. I probably need to more rigorously clean the build machine.

Ubuntu Bionic is not yet supported since there are still small (upstream) bugs, which are hard to fix with our resources ... Its under testing and can't serve as a proper reference point. Try building Debian Stretch Desktop to test your build system.