apt error {was(Re: SOLVED(?) -- Re: Welcome to the "kubuntu-users" mailing list}

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Saturday 27 February 2010, Clay Weber wrote:
> On Saturday 27 February 2010 03:29:13 pm Reinhold Rumberger wrote:
> > On Saturday 27 February 2010, Clay Weber wrote:
> > > Un-hijacking the original thread
> > > 
> > > > On Saturday 27 February 2010 12:17:28 pm Lindsay Mathieson 
wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:21:38 am Bruce MacArthur wrote:
> > > > > > I think that all of this was accomplished.  There WAS a
> > > > > > JDK license agreement which I tried to accept by
> > > > > > tapping <Enter>; this had no visible effect, and I
> > > > > > finally closed the window.  This also closed the
> > > > > > Konsole session.  Perhaps I did something wrong,but
> > > > > > there was no tradditional "I agree" button!  "We shall
> > > > > > see!"
> > > > > 
> > > > > I think you cancelled it :(
> > > > > 
> > > > > Try again, this time use the <TAB> key to highlight the
> > > > > text "Ok" and
> > > > 
> > > > press
> > > > 
> > > > > <enter>
> > > > 
> > > > Hello, Lindsay --
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks for your comments.  When I again do "apt-get update",
> > > > there are a lot of hits followed by --
> > > > 
> > > > 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?
> > > 
> > > Unless you have another package manager running in the
> > > background (cli or gui), you will need to remove the lock
> > > file mentioned in the error:
> > > 
> > > sudo rm  /var/lib/dpkg/lock
> > 
> > Actually, don't!
> > It's likely KPackageKit or something similar. Just wait 5
> > minutes and try again...
> 
> And why not, if the package management process has somehow died,
> leaving the stale lock file behind?

How do you know it's a stale lock? The file doesn't contain a PID for 
you to check and KPackageKit doesn't advertise that it's locking the 
file. After waiting a little, you can be fairly sure that the lock is 
stale, but not right after the first attempt...

  --Reinhold