Unable to acquire the lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend
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nouveau3456
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guigui -
guigui -
Hello everyone,
I have a small problem every time I try to use the command
I have a small problem every time I try to use the command
apt-getthis message appears
E: Unable to obtain the lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to obtain the lock for dpkg (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend). Another process may be using it.
root@pop-os:/home/user#
4 answers
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Hello,
This problem is quite classic, and a little prior research on the Internet would likely have helped you resolve your issue (see for example this page).
Problem explanation
To prevent multiple package managers from executing updates simultaneously, apt creates temporary locks and removes them once the operation is complete. This error message has two possible explanations:- Explanation 1: another package manager is already open,
- Explanation 2: a package manager was abruptly closed and could not remove the locks it had set.
In your specific case, the message seems to indicate that it is
Diagnosis
To find out which case you are in, run the commandps faux | egrep "(apt|synaptic|adept|muon|discover)"
from a terminal. This way you will see if a package manager is currently running
If lines appear, you are in case 2 (please report the result of this command to confirm). Otherwise, you are in case 1.
Problem resolution: case 1:
There is nothing to resolve; you just need to find the package manager (synaptic,aptitude
,apt-get
, ...). If you cannot find it, you can kill it from your process manager or with the pkill command (e.g.sudo pkill apt-get
). You will then trigger case 2.
Problem resolution: case 2
Before running these commands, ensure that no package managers are running (see diagnosis).
1) Remove the locks untilapt-get
works. Here is a relatively exhaustive list of potential locks that might be lingering:
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend
sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
(there may be others)
2) You may need to complete any aborted update. Again, you will see an error message indicating that you need to run a command like:
sudo dpkg --configure -a
3) Runapt-get
normally. For example, if you want to installtypespeed
:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install typespeed
Good luck-
-
Indeed,
unattended-upgrade
can launch automatic updates. It's an optional package that you can safely remove if it annoys you.
As I mentioned earlier, a lock should not be removed if an update is in progress, otherwise you risk messing things up.
1) You can easily check if an update is in progress by looking at the ongoing processes:
ps faux | egrep "(apt|dpkg)" | grep -v grep
If a line appears, it means an update is in progress.
2) You can then decide to abort the update. It's messy but doable. The first number that appears on this line corresponds to the PID. You can use the commandsudo kill -9 PID
by replacing PID with the appropriate value to kill said process. Go back to step (1) to check that there are no more package managers running.
3) Finally, you need to remove the residual locks, which were not removed because the package manager was abruptly killed. This includes/var/lib/dpkg/lock
. To find the names of the implicated locks, it's very simple, just launch your package manager, for example with the commandsudo apt update
. If a lock remains, the update will not start andapt
will give you the name of a lock, which you can then remove (sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
). Repeat the operation until you have removed each lock.
Good luck -
