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Re: Update and Package manager unresponsive



On Saturday 08 July 2006 09:20, Stephen Fahey wrote:
> E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission
> denied) E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/),
> are you root?
>

You cannot run two simulataneous processes both of which will upgrade packages 
on your system. For example you cannot run two apt-get sessions or 
apt-get+synaptic sessions etc., simultaneously. To make sure that there are 
no such simultaneous sessions what apt does is to create a lock file. If the 
lock file is present other process cannot upgrade the packages.

What would have happened in your case is that one of your 
apt-get/synaptic/aptitude sessions were stopped abruptly. So the lock file 
was not deleted. you can kill the corresponding apt-get/synaptic/aptitude 
process by doing 

pkill apt-get

as root. Substitude apt-get with your package manager. After that everything 
should be fine.

> I've tried rebooting to no effect.

If you are using Debian (or any other Linux for that matter), normally you can 
trouble shoot a problem without rebooting. Rebooting is M$ way of solving 
problems. Do you want to be perceived as a clueless M$ user?

raju

-- 
http://kamaraju.googlepages.com/cornell-bazaar
http://groups.google.com/group/cornell-bazaar/about



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