I get this error when trying to use apt-get:
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?
How can I fix this?
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
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
After that, try opening Synaptic again.
(Note: my original answer was extensively edited by Guillem Jover, the primary dpkg developer.)
I see pretty much all the answers recommend deleting the lock. That must never be done, it is always preferable to kill dpkg (which is supposed to be resilient against that kind of event), than to even think about removing its lock file (where its presence does not indicate the lock being held). The locks are acquired when a dpkg or an apt process is running, and are released (by the kernel if necessary) when the processes complete or are killed. Newer dpkg and apt versions will print the PID of the process holding the contended lock file, and apt now even waits by default for the locks to be released. This is covered in the dpkg FAQ.
If you try:
sudo fuser -vik -TERM /var/lib/dpkg/lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo dpkg --configure --pending
that will prompt to terminate any process currently holding these lock files, which, once killed will get the locks released. If you see an apt-get process or an aptitude process that looks stuck, killing them should be less harmful than when the packaging system is in the middle of a package installation. If the processes are really stuck and you have no other choice, you might need to kill them by passing -KILL instead of -TERM. You then need to finish any pending configuration so that dpkg can get those into a better state, and so that it can also integrate updates to its journal to the main status database.
Killing a dpkg process directly, if present, is in general not a great idea, because if dpkg is active, some maintainer script might be performing actions that are not resilient against abrupt termination (or crashes), but dpkg internally should be resilient to such abrupt terminations, and it's preferable to do that, than to remove any lock file, which has a way higher chance of damaging both the dpkg database and the filesystem.
Killing a frontend such as an apt-get or aptitude process, while not ideal, is in general much safer.
Remove your /var/lib/dpkg/lock file and force package reconfiguration.
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo dpkg --configure -a
It should work after this.
The most likely way to hit this is:
sudo apt-get install whateverand the command-line apt overlaps with update-manager automatically polling.
So if you try again in a few minutes that should fix it.
You will get this message if you forget to use sudo when executing an apt command.
Otherwise this is a sign that something else is installing or removing software and has locked the apt database while it performs the actions. The programs that can do this are:
IMPORTANT: only try the below as a last resort since it can crash your system. First try killing any running instance of apt or aptitude as described in Faheem's answer.
You can force the lock off by removing the file, but it's not recommended without first closing the program that's holding the lock safely, since you could cause corruption or interrupt an installation (bad). The command provided by João should close the program that holds the lock and then remove the lock but won't protect you from install interruption:
sudo fuser -cuk /var/lib/dpkg/lock; sudo rm -f /var/lib/dpkg/lock
And the same command can be used for the apt cache lock:
sudo fuser -cuk /var/cache/apt/archives/lock; sudo rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
Only one program can hold the lock. Make sure that you are not running aptitude, synaptic or adept. Close the program and run it again it should work.You may either have synaptic open, or have another terminal window open running apt-get, or have the update manager running.Check it and see if any of those are running,if any of them is running close it and try again.
Try this command in terminal to find what is running
ps -e | grep -e apt -e adept | grep -v grep
Note:
If that doesn’t print anything, type the following in terminal to remove the lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
Now you can install any Packages.
So far the best way to get it working without breaking a possible background running installation ( as it could happen by removing the lock file), is stopping the service using apt:
Error:
# sudo apt-get upgrade
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?`
Solution:
sudo systemctl stop apt-daily.timer
After upgrading the system I suggest re-enabling it, as the bug locking it could be fixed with the upgrade.
sudo systemctl start apt-daily.timer
I haven't verified this error gets fixed after upgrading. I'll add a new comment once I have that verified
First of all we should check what process created the lock file using lsof:
sudo lsof /var/lib/dpkg/lock
or in another situation where /var/lib/apt/lists/lock is problematic:
sudo lsof /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
The output will be close to something like:
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
apt-get 12127 root 4uW REG 252,1 0 86 /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
Then we should check what the commad is doing, we can find it out using ps, pgrep etc; the command is apt-get so I run:
pgrep apt-get -a
The -a switch lists the full command for me, in my case it's:
pgrep -a apt-get
12127 apt-get update
we can see that it's running update subcommand, I could run something like this too:
ps -f 12127
which produces:
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY STAT TIME CMD
root 12127 12126 0 09:39 pts/0 S+ 0:00 apt-get update
In this case I would wait for some minute for resource to be freed and if after 2 or 3 minute problem still exist or the command was something that I didn't care about or was not harmful for system (like this apt-get update) I send a SIGTERM to the process:
sudo kill -15 12127
It should do the work, If it didn't I'm going to send SIGINT this time (It's like pressing CTRL+C):
sudo kill -2 12127
If it didn't work too, we should send an SIGHUP (kill -1), and finally if nothing works I simply kill the process:
sudo kill -9 12127
or
sudo pkill -9 apt-get
Then I remove busy resources:
sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
This error may be caused by the Update Manager trying to automatically refresh the list of packages in background, usually right after your login, thus locking the directory.
In this case just wait few seconds (or more, if your last update was long ago) for it to complete or launch Update Manager to check the status.
Don't be so fast to remove something, it may totally damage your system; rather wait until the currently installing or uninstalling program finishes its task and after that you will get access. If you think that there is nothing currently installing or uninstalling, then just reboot your system with the command sudo reboot.
If you have security updates set to auto-install this will happen frequently. I literally wait 30 seconds and it fixes the issue. Just throwing this out there in case anyone else encounters this issue.
In my case, I had to wait for several minutes for the lock to be released (looks like apt used to hold it). This all happened right after system boot.
I have had this issue numerous times. For me, it was almost always caused by apt-get or some GUI that called it getting hung for some reason. I had to kill it which left various locks in place.
The other answers bring up very good points about making sure no updates are currently running before doing anything drastic like removing lock files. However, once you are sure that's not the case, the following usually works for me. I got it by reading many answers to questions like this one.
While most or all of this is presented in the other answers, this distills the fix down to a few commands.
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
Use for unlocking the package system after an update of some kind crashed or terminated without finishing in some other way. These commands should be run in the order presented.
Check the Launcher to see if Software Updater is running. If so maximize it and have a look at what it is doing. If it is still checking, then wait for it to complete. When it completes it might tell you the software is up-to-date so close the app. If it says there are updates available, either do the update or click "remind me later". After this this app closes you can go back to using apt-get or apt.
If Software Updater is not running, just use the Dash to invoke it and the wait for completion and then decide if you want to update or click "remind me later". After this this app closes you can go back to using apt-get or apt.
sudo killall -9 apt && sudo killall -9 dpkg
Use at your own risk
I don't see this answer anywhere above but on Ubuntu 16.04, I encountered this problem as well. The cause was the time on my computer was set into the future. (This is because I'm on a Windows+Ubuntu dual boot system and I guess I have messed up local time vs UTC time.)
One odd thing was that the locked file's date and time was the exact date and time that I ran the program.
I then used "fuser" as described in earlier posts and apt worked, but I was getting complaints about needing to run dpkg -a -reconfigure. When I did that, I got errors like:
newline in field name #padding
in files like '/var/lib/dpkg/updates/0003'.
All of this was very strange as I've never seen it before. So, I thought these were symptoms and changed my data and time manually. I knew there was a problem with the date/time when I logged in, but was ignoring it. (Previously, it was setting it automatically via the Internet and NTP).
Then, all of the above problems were fixed... Hopefully, this helps someone else! The most notable symptom is perhaps the date/time of the lock file being the exact date/time that you are trying to run the command.
In my case, X crashed while apt-get was still removing old kernels. I used the System Monitor to confirm it was still running and not stuck. Everything was fine once the process finished.
In my case I was getting the same message by not realizing I had switched to root user and was trying sudo apt-get. Once I realized this I just ran apt-get, and it worked. Silly, but it might still explain the error for some.
in my case, after:
I typed
sudo apt update
sudp apt upgrade
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?
sudo apt update
apt list --upgradable
This command will show you a list of programs in my case only Firefox, I closed Firefox, then could ran the command again without problems.
sudo apt upgrade
For people who are interested in proactively preventing this bug in their scripts, I found that the -q flag on apt upgrade -yq was causing this issue for me. During the upgrade process I guess it would occasionally give me warnings (something along the lines of updating the desktop, would I like to continue), and if these warnings were suppressed, then I guess that causes apt to not unlock the files it was protecting and it got stuck.
Admittedly, I had trouble reproducing this error 100% of the time, but eliminating that -q option completely fixed the issue for me.
Like most everyone else I waited for the lock to be removed. After 30 minutes I gave up and hard booted to a different distribution. From there I used the internet for some research which landed me here.
It turns out unattended-upgrades.service is running. I found that be rebooting into the broken system and running:
sudo systemctl disable apt-daily.service
sudo systemctl disable unattended-upgrades.service
sudo systemctl disable apt-daily-upgrade.service
sudo systemctl disable apt-daily-upgrade.timer
sudo systemctl disable apt-daily.timer
sudo shutdown -r # Note it will take a couple minutes to reboot
allowed me to get the broken system working again for:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install -f
However it didn't fix the kept-back packages and impossible situation reported by apt in the first place. It would appear this was causing apt to lock up at boot in the first place.
I have tried the top upvoted answers on this page and they always worked for me without exception, however I discovered an easier way to solve this problem. First some theory. What happens before a user gets this error message?
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?
/var/lib/dpkg/lock is locked so the terminal temporarily can't use it, but what process is it locked by? This depends on the circumstances. If you have booted the computer a few minutes ago it is probably locked by the Software app. Try closing the terminal and launching the Software app. If the Software app is indeed locking /var/lib/dpkg/lock it will show a screen that says Software catalog is being downloaded when you open it.
After the Software app finishes updating it will show a popup notification message, and another Software Updater window may also appear as show below. Otherwise the Software app will remove its own lock without the user needing to run any commands in the terminal.
After it has finished updating the software the Software Updater will remove its own lock without the user needing to run any commands in the terminal.
Another case where this answer is useful is in a VM when booting an Ubuntu guest OS that has been inactive for a while. Normally the Ubuntu guest OS starts to update almost immediately. The updating process frequently locks out commands that require installing, removing or updating software until it finishes. Open the Software app, let it finish running and install whatever updates that you want it to install. The Software app will remove its own lock when it finishes.
Just reboot and it will auto fix the problem. This is your installation interrupted accidently.
Adding this only in the hope that it might be connected, I have not tested this solution. If deleting the lock files does not help, and if it is not even recommended according to the accepted answer, it might help how the similar problem dpkg: error: dpkg status database is locked by another process could be solved using the recovery mode with sudo dpkg --configure -a in the root shell prompt.
I had removed the lock files, and there was no PID running, yet, whenever I executed sudo dpkg --configure -a, the shell was stuck at one of the previously locked "apt" tasks that I had force-closed by closing the terminal in the end.
I also killed the apt processes using sudo killall apt apt-get. The stuck apt task in my case was "Setting up docker-ce (5:20.10.1~3-0~ubuntu-bionic)".
Solution in my case:
sudo dpkg --configure -a.Please see screenshots and detailed explanation (e.g. how to get the recovery mode at start) at the answer of docker ps stuck … docker install also just hangs.
My solution was:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Runtime environment:
Operation System: Ubuntu 18.04
Computer:Dell Precision 5510
