Linux 操作系统（Ubuntu）

Question

I am tying sudo apt-get install gparted command on terminal but it is not working properly and showing this error. What could be the problem?

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?

Answer 1

Restarting the system should solve the problem. If the restarting doesn't help, try this link

You can delete the lock file with the following command:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock

You may also need to delete the lock file in the cache directory

sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Answer 2

Try this:

sudo lsof /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo lsof /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo lsof /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

for every results you get from about get process id and Kill it with (could be that only one will give you result - was my case)

sudo kill -9 {process_id}

then remove locks:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

and finally run reconf for packages:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

Answer 3

i got the same issue when i upgraded my 32-bit ubuntu16.04 to 64-bit configurations.

You need to just delete the lock files in the directory /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend .this worked for me.

And also i recommend you to just hit the sudo apt-get upgrade command to upgrade the packages you have to be latest ones.

Answer 4

maybe you have another installation in course, because the last question "is another process using it?" or maybe you didn't noted the system is updating itself.

Answer 5

I got these messages after I started removing my own service from my Ubuntu 16.04 LTS box (did sudo rm /etc/init.d/mysvc; sudo update-rc.d mysvc remove ), but forgot to kill the daemon that was spawned by mysvc . So the removal of mysvc has not been completed. After I killed the daemon, these messages were gone. HTH, :)

Answer 6

The error message thrown in Terminal is kinda sufficient in explaining the issue. The dpkg has an exclusive lock and if you are not able to use it for now, there is another program / update / install currently using it.

The ideal way would be to leave it running and let it complete. I would personally never kill the lock process to suspend whatever the heck is going on in background.

If you see it frequently, you may need to turn off automatic updates under Software & Updates .

Source : Fix : Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Answer 7

This means some other process is running or while running some process you accidentally killed the terminal or due to network connection it got hanged in such cases you get this. Possible solutions.

First Login to the system from other terminal

check

ps -a 

kill the process if you find any being used

Second if first doesnt work, you need to remove the lock

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Answer 8

I had a similar thing happened to me when I was trying to do a

sudo install python3.8

Which would give me the error message

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

Listing the running processes with the ps command, I noticed that there were some processes "stuck" on install. Doing some research I learned that Ubuntu tries to do daily auto updates which locks these processes.

$ ps aux | grep -i apt
root      1464  0.0  0.0   4624   772 ?        Ss   19:08   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/apt/apt.systemd.daily install
root      1484  0.0  0.0   4624  1676 ?        S    19:08   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/apt/apt.systemd.daily lock_is_held install
imartinez  6172  0.0  0.0  21532  1152 pts/1    S+   19:16   0:00 grep --color=auto -i apt

Solution : To fix my problem all I did was open the Software Updater app in the Menu and install the latest Ubuntu upgrades through the GUI. This ended up unlocking the files and I was able to install python along with other software packages.