That heading probably doesn't make sense. I am a bit delirious having reinstalled Ubuntu three or Debian times today due to problems I couldn't make sense of.

I made an attempt to get wifi working without using Wicd or NM but that went wrong and now I have Netplan and a botched attempt at ifupdown - its service is I think running though I uninstalled ifupdown. I only know this went wrong because the computer won't boot now. I am at the end of time using someone else's internet, being a pay as you go customer using tethering when at home, so ideally I'd solve this quickly or accept I need to use the last of the time reinstalling.

I just need to remove the service don't I? I have no idea where it is or how this is done. Netplan worked with a usb/ethernet adapter and Wicd would suffice for other purposes, I'll have to settle for that. What I was attempting, having wifi without Wicd or NM, I'm sure I'll never get my head round, though it had worked about eight years ago when I was using DWM.

So having removed ifupdown I just need to remove the service it has set up in systemd I think. You can probably just about work out what I'm trying to say, I'm sure the jargon is wrong. Otherwise I will need ot be up at 4 installing from scratch again.

Help much appreciated. As will be my bed in a moment. Sigh...

This setup is using Ubuntu 18.04 with Fluxbox and no display manager. So when I try to start up it freezes saying starting login, just at the point where I'd be logging in. There is a mention of systemd, following the usually verbose startup text.

Netplan actually works with either NetworkManager or systemd-networkd as the so-called "network renderer". In other words, it's a front-end to one of these network management systems.

What makes you think that "I have Netplan and a botched attempt at ifupdown"? What does your Netplan configuration look like?

You can list all your active services with
and all installed services with list-unit-files instead of list-units. If there is an ifupdown service, you should see it in one of the two lists.

I am not sure what your goal is, but if you want to use ifupdown instead of one of the two network renderers supported by Netplan, you will have to replace Netplan. I found instructions at ask.ubuntu, but I have not tried them.

I will have to return to this when there's less happening. I'm happy to stick with Netplan on that machine but in my delirium I attempted to install ifupdown as the wifi wasn't working and I have struggled to bring the interfaces up of late using commands. The cabbaged machine is having a full DE installed on it right temporarily so that I can get on with what I've been doing, but I will be returning to the lean install.

I appreciate the near-live assistance on forums though, as sometimes googling can lead to out of date and conflicting information that leads to a system becoming borked, which has been where I've found myself at least once in the last week.

I wouldn't mind if this thread was deleted, but I've just added this so no one adds any more comments when I can't attend to the issue at present.