Failer - Installing Updates

[hgconrad]

I received this error trying to install updates:

============ Log ===========

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

[penglezos]

Another resource is using this directory, maybe you have synaptic running? Happened to me couple of times ?

[WytWun]

I've seen this happen when Install Updates is run immediately after logging in on startup, while the update check performed as part of startup is still running.  For some reason this is much easier to provoke in VMs than on real hardware for me, though I don't doubt it could happen on real hardware.

I can't recall the original source of the following, but the last time I encountered this I used the following sequence of commands:

Code:

# to clean up the lock issues, execute the following commands in order
sudo fuser -vki /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo fuser -vki /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo fuser -vki /var/cache/debconf/config.dat
sudo dpkg --configure -a

To avoid a repeat, I now run the resource monitor and use its filter function (F4) to show process names containing "apt" (without quotes) and wait until none are shown before running Install Updates.

[valtam]

We should see a significant reduction in the reporting of this error from 3.6 onwards.