-1
abdullahradhy@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install emacs23
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?
abdullahradhy@ubuntu:~$

What is the problem? how to solve it?

Thomas Ward
  • 74,764
Abdullah Radhy
  • 1

1 Answers1

1

When you see this error, it means that another application (or process) is currently using apt, and thus it cannot be used by your desired process (since only one process may use it at any one time).

If you are using Ubuntu desktop, it is most likely that it is checking for updates or installing updates in the background. You may be able to investigate who or what is using it by using the "System Monitor" application, or htop.

If you are certain that nothing is running, you can try to kill any processes, with killall command. For example: sudo killall apt-get, sudo killall apt or sudo killall dpkg. Also try a system reboot (this works for me every time I see this error).

If all this fails, you can just remove the lock file, since a process creates the file when using it, and deletes it automatically after, however if the process was interupted (aborted, crashed etc.), it would still be there. Run sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dpkg/lock to remove this.

Daniel M.
  • 1,903