I have been running WeeWX on a Pi 3B with Raspbian Stretch since early
2018. I do an automated Duplicity backup once-a-week, and a separate
backup of my WeeWX files just before I update my software and reboot,
which I also perform weekly. My software update script contains these
lines:

sudo /etc/init.d/weewx stop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean

Like I said, I've been doing this weekly since early 2018 with no
headaches. This week however, I lost my entire visual interface: no
command line, no GUI, as if my HDMI port was completely dead. I could
still ssh in and verify that the Pi was running more or less properly.

A few web searches suggested that HDMI problems could be alleviated by
editing /boot/config.txt, which currently looks like this:

disable_overscan=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=47
dtparam=i2c_arm=on
dtparam=audio=on
program_usb_boot_mode=1
dtoverlay=i2c-rtc,ds3231

I made a few tweaks suggested by a few sites. Nothing worked. Still no HDMI.

One site suggested updated the Pi's firmware, so I did a sudo rpi-update.

BTW, verified on another Pi that my monitor was still working.

I was getting nowhere, so I finally threw in the towel and replaced the
contents of /boot with the latest backup of that directory. Rebooted.
HDMI came back! Joy!

Now the question: What have I been doing in my backups since early 2018
that finally came back and bit me in the butt? I'd like to do an in situ
upgrade to Buster pretty soon, but I won't proceed with that until I
learn what I've been doing wrong.

[For those who wonder, WeeWX interfaces with a Davis Vantage Vue weather
station, and aside from some initial setup issues, thanks to the WeeWX
community, has given me no trouble.]

--
chrispam1@me.com is a filtered spam magnet. Email replies may be lost.
You're better off replying to this newsgroup.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05