Unable to get exclusive lock

[r-breed]

I know its been a few years since this post was made but, im having the same problem as guts and glory. So i did the things you said and it still says "status database area is locked by another process"

After i wrote 'sudo apt-get clean all' it didnt say anything but /home/user/

Can someone help me as i really dont know what im doing!
All i want to do is to enable desktop mode. So i can then install programs like vlc media player for watching movies

Thanks for reading

Edit:
ok i don't know where the rest of the post went?!
So when i type in 'sudo synaptic' i get a error saying
"Unable to get exclusive lock - This usually means that another package management application (like apt-get or aptitude) already running. Please close that application first."

And when i type "sudo dpkg --configure -a"
i get "dpkg: status database area is locked by another process"

[ptkobe]

if you do
$ sudo apt-get install vlc
you get a similar error?

[r-breed]

Hey thanks for the reply

Whats with the $ sign do i add that in? when i did it didn't work

with out it it said:

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?

[ptkobe]

Hi
The $ sign just means it's a command to write on the prompt. You should ignore it.

Don't know how to help you.
Anoher thing I'll said to purge it and install again. But if you remove the package manager, how will you install it again?

May try
$ sudo apt-get check

and check if you have the file
$ sudo ls -lh /var/lib/dpkg/lock

post the results. Maybe I have some kind of light or someone else may be of assistance.

btw, have you reboot since?

[r-breed]

ok sudo apt-get check said the same thing:
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?

and sudo ls -lh /var/lib/dpkg/lock
said: -rw-r----- 1 root root 0 May 7 20:29 /var/lib/dpkg/lock

I reset my computer yes

[D-cat]

Auto update utility maybe? Don't know, just a pot shot in the dark here; I'm trying to think what might keep you locked out of dpkg after a reboot.

The existance of the lock file tells the progrm another process is already using it. The date stamp tells me it's not stale.

I would first do a ps aux | grep apt to see if anything pops up. If it does, kill it. If not, try

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

and see if you have access to your apt utils.

[r-breed]

Thanks for all the help!

When you say reboot, do you mean restarting the computer or rebooting the whole system? Cause i havent done that, should i? If so how?

What is Auto update utility? And ps aux | grep apt?

When i do: rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
I get:
rm: remove write-protected regular empty file /var/lib/dpkg/lock'? y
rm: cannot remove m /var/lib/dpkg/lock': Permision denied

Sorry i really don't know much about linux, its so confusing for me

Ryan

[D-cat]

Rebooting is going through the normal shutdown proceedure, then the computer restarts itself.

Auto update usually launches a few seconds after the desktop loads and checks the Internet for what updates are available. It's supposed to ask you (by default) before it actually does anything, but if it is doing anything, it will tie up the package manager on you.

The rm failed because you didn't use sudo. You need to be the SuperUser (root), eq. Administrator, in order to install programs in Linux. This means any program runing the apt utilities will run as root, and any files they create will be owned by root. A standard user does not have the permissions required to modify or delete a file owned by root. Prifixing a command with sudo says Do this as SuperUser, or IOW, let me pretend I am root while doing this.

[r-breed]

With sudo infront it didnt do anything.

How can i make it so i can watch avi movie files?

[D-cat]

No feedback usually means no errors were encountered. Check for the file's existence again (ls -lh /var/lib/dpkg/lock). If it's gone, the rm worked, and you can try opening Synaptic.

AFA opening an AVI, simply double clicking on the file should cause it to load in Totem. If the issue is missing codecs, use Synaptic to install ubuntu-restricted-extras (or you can use sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restriced-extras). Obviously the first issue needs to be solved first.

If you find you still don't have the codec you need, then check out the Medibuntu repository.
Medibuntu :: Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu