All Package managers say one of the other is active; none wo

[Pythzor]

I just burned Linux Mint XFCE and installed it today. I'm impressed (I have it on a low resource machine) .

But it won't update. Update manager says: Another application is using APT. Synaptic says: Unable to get exclusive lock. This usually means that another package management application (like apt-get or aptitude) is already running. Please close that application first. GDebi Package Installer: Only one software management tool is allowed to run at the same time. Please close the other application e.g. Update Manager, aptitude or Synaptic first. Terminal: 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?

I've tried sudo killall apt and sudo killall aptitude. Hasn't helped. What to do?

Any help given me would be much appreciated. Thanks for all the help in the past.

[AlbertP]

You have to remove some file named 'lock' in some subfolder of /var (/var/lib/apt/lists/lock or /var/lib/dpkg/lock). You can do it through the terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

If you prefer using the file manager, you can open Thunar as root:

Code: Select all

gksudo thunar

Note that this is for Xfce users, users of other desktops may want to use another file manager
Then remove /var/lib/apt/lists/lock and /var/lib/dpkg/lock. Before you do this, make sure there is no APT, dpkg or Synaptic process running.

[Pythzor]

Thank you very much.

[Pythzor]

I just used it again -- thank you very much.

[DrDaveHPP]

Many thanks, AlbertP - your first lock remover sorted my hanging Update Manager problem. (For some reason, Synaptic was still working fine.)

[70363c1413]

Thank you AlbertP, 2+ years after you very helpful post.

[rigel]

Thanks! worked perfectly