nuke DB...right...I remember something about that, of course that was on windows...hmmm
wanders off to poke around/
hold up! I found another set of logs, and perhaps this will be instructive, at least about my ignorance if nothing else.
So, pathing, the perennial bugaboo of Armory support; I have both core and Armory pointed to an alternate location, /media/BITCORE/ but both seem to still write some data to /home/usr/.bitcoin and /home/usr/.armory. 200 some odd GB in .bitcoin on my boot nVME was the issue that precipitated this whole exercise.
I am really sorry guys, I swear once you get me trained back up I will help point some noobs to electrum for a while, I try and give back, but the months go by and computers are not my main thing.
The log files in /media/BITCORE are too large for pastebin, and seem to end around newyears, clearly my pathing is borked yet again...I do not recall changing anything but we have already established that this is not unheard of.
here is the tail of armorylog
https://pastebin.com/dFYGZ5jn"when I click on dblog there it tells me "some file(s) could not be opened! you may not have the permission to read"
ffs...since when, it worked before
linux permissions fml, I am in hell