Adept hangup

[Mike DePolis]

I would guess you are running into a problem with leftover lock file(s) 
since the application couldn't close cleanly.  This forum message 
describes how to get rid of the lock files...

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=331923


Gerald I. Evenden wrote:
> Adept noted about 44 updates to my system so I proceeded to start the process.  
> Since this is a somewhat length process I left the computer to its devices 
> and returned about 40 minutes later with the screen showing about 3% 
> completion on installing one of the updates.  The downloads had been 
> completed.
>
> But, after several moments, the Adept still showed 3% completion and it became 
> obvious that Adept was in hyperspace.  I tried everything I could think of to 
> get Adept to cleanly quit but to no avail.
>
> Even after rebooting I now get the message:
>
> "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."
>
> whenever I try to execute Adept.  A "ps -A" gives me no clue as to what might 
> be running and suspect that some file or directory has been locked.
>
> HELP!  How do I get this cleaned up.
>
> Many thanks.
>
>