when you close it prematurely the lock file stays there. it puts a lock on the program so that you don't run more than one instance of it at the same time. you have to remove the lock file.

An easy way of deleting the lock file is to open nautilus (the file browser) in root (gksudo nautilus), click on file system then navigate through the folders var/lib/dpkg.

Inside the folder dpkg should be a file called 'lock'. Send it to the rubbish bin. Problem solved.

I had the same issue:

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

I tried searching for processes that were using it as advised in an earlier post by doing:

Neither of those revealed the culprit.

I then noticed that I had Synaptic Package Manager open. Once I closed that and attempted sudo apt-get update it completed successfully.

Hopefully this helps!

I'm having the same problem with:
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/)


If I find and kill apt, later I can apt-get update but it hangs at this stage:

Get:7 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons [6,804 kB]
0% [Working]

And it hangs here indefinitely.

I read elsewhere that one should NOT delete the lock (using rm), because it protects from worse things happening, but rather kill the Process. When I search for apt and ftp, there are processes with *progressive* five digit PIDs:

ps aux | grep apt
root 18031 0.0 0.0 4728 812 pts/0 S+ 13:19 0:00 grep apt
root@Workstation:/home/sunny# ps aux | grep apt
root 18033 0.0 0.0 4728 824 pts/0 R+ 13:19 0:00 grep apt
root@Workstation:/home/sunny# ps aux | grep apt
root 18035 0.0 0.0 4728 816 pts/0 S+ 13:19 0:00 grep apt
root@Workstation:/home/sunny# ps aux | grep apt
root 18086 0.0 0.0 4728 812 pts/0 S+ 13:33 0:00 grep apt

When I try to kill these:

killall apt* dpkg
apt*: no process found
dpkg: no process found

Any advice?

@Mi82:

Please paste the output from the following command:

and the following information: your distro and version.

Also, reboot your machine and paste the output from the following command:

Hmm, no command inxi. I tried installing it and:

apt-get install inxi
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package inxi


Inxi looks very useful. Is there another way I can get that info?

I got it! I reverted my sources list from a backup. I had changed them to an online-generated version (Zuerich) because I was having trouble with errors in the old (the ones I just reverted to) sources list (below):


deb http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free
deb-src http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main

# stretch-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main


I am now getting those errors again, but much preferable to the prior problem:
Ign:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease
Ign:5 http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease

I now have inxi:
inxi -r

Repos: Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free
deb-src http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main
deb http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.is.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main
Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/base.list
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch main

Some comments:

. Those "ign" output lines you are seeing are not errors. They mean that there are no changes in the pdiff index file so apt won't bother downloading it again.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/2945...apt-get-update

. /etc/apt/sources.list.d/base.list seems superfluous. You already have the main repo defined in the main list. I would delete that file.

. You would find a broader range of software available to you if you also specified contrib non-free for all the Debian repos.

See https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList

. For readability and formatting reasons, you should paste all commands and output here on LQ using CODE tags (see https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...og.php?b=36313) like this:

Thank you!!

No problem. Is everything working ok now?