I Updated this Linux box to Linux Mint 22.1 Xia and now  DarkMX refuses to join my pre-existing Channel. The Channel Rootkey is unchanged. I then installed the newest release of DarkMX without any issues and get the same result. There's 18 in my DarkMX channel which was originally created by this node and instance of DarkMX however the Channel count for this instance continues to state '1' One and refuses to see and join the other DarkMX channel of the same name, and same rootkey.

I've experienced this 1yr or more ago with a bad install but that was eventually corrected. This time the installs and upgrades went fine.... except I can't rejoin my Channel now. Thoughts or suggestions?

have you looked at the Admin-host mode setting?
only one user can be in host-mode.