Newbie Adept package manager not working

[Tez]

Kathy O. wrote:
> Hi!
> I am new to Kubuntu and am having a couple of problems.
> #1 the Adept package manager is not working right.  I have used it a couple of 
> times and it worked fine.  Today I was going to un-install some software and 
> I got the following message at start up.
> You will not be able to change your system settings in any way (install, 
> remove or upgrade software), because another process is using the packaging 
> system database (probably some other Adept application or apt-get or 
> aptitude). Please close the other application before using this one.
> So I kdesu-ed and got the following message.
> X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
>   Major opcode:  144
>   Minor opcode:  3
>   Resource id:  0x0
> Failed to open device
> X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
>   Major opcode:  144
>   Minor opcode:  3
>   Resource id:  0x0
> Failed to open device
> Adept will finally open, but when it does preview changes and quit are the 
> only things I can click on.
> Needless to say it makes it imposable to do much of any thing with it.
> I have also noticed that the error message above comes up in other 
> applications.  Please help!  Thanks!  Kathy
>
>
>   
That error is nothing to do with Adept, it's to do with Xorg and some
settings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf about wacom drivers, but it's not fatal.
The error about another process using the packing system database means
that something has locked the database. Try running (in a terminal):
"ps aux|egrep '(apt|dpkg|adept)' "
to see if there is another Adept, apt or dpkg open, if there is then run
"sudo kill [PID]"
where [PID] is the PID of the process (you'll see it from the output of ps)
If there isn't another process running then you can get Adept working
the messy way:
"sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock"

Tez