That workaround fixed the problem for me too - turns out the image I was working with already had gamin installed. Purging gamin also removed lighttpd, then re-installed lighttpd produced the following:
Setting up lighttpd (1.4.35-4ubuntu1) ...
Job for lighttpd.service failed. See "systemctl status lighttpd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript lighttpd, action "start" failed.
That workaround fixed the problem for me too - turns out the image I was working with already had gamin installed. Purging gamin also removed lighttpd, then re-installed lighttpd produced the following:
Setting up lighttpd (1.4.35-4ubuntu1) ...
Job for lighttpd.service failed. See "systemctl status lighttpd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript lighttpd, action "start" failed.