I'm also having the build database error on 0.95.1 with Core 0.13.1 on Ubuntu.
Firstly, do not hijack someone else's thread. Make your own.
I have killed bitcoind, and closed Armory (there was no ArmoryDB running in Ubuntu). I start bitcoind first and then run Armory, but Armory complains that Core is running and I must shut it down. I assumed this was because I didn't have an RPC username and password, but the bitcoin.conf is empty and armory doesn't seem to be creating it as usual.
No. Please do not make these assumptions, especially when you do not know what has changed.
The reason that Armory is complaining that Core is running is because you still have it setup to auto manage the bitcoind. Just go to the settings and uncheck the setting that has Armory run Bitcoind in the background. Then try again.
However, once I kill bitcoind and have armory check again it runs and gets the Build Database error. I did run armory from terminal and this error seems to keep repeating which is why it's not going anywhere:
No. That error is unrelated. It is not why nothing is happening. Please do not assume when you do not actually know what is going on behind the scenes.
A couple things - after a full factory reset of Armory it doesn't create the bitcoin.conf file with the RPC codes. Had it stopped doing that in recent updates? Does Armory require Python 3?
That is intentional. Bitcoin Core deprecated the rpcuser and rpcpassword stuff in favor of cookie authentication (a per session user and pass) which can be easily obtained by Armory.