dependency problems

[Clay Weber]

On Wednesday, November 26, 2014 09:45:36 AM Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
> (2014/11/25 12:32), O. Sinclair wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > On 24/11/2014 20:29, Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
> >> (2014/11/25 1:07), O. Sinclair wrote: On 24/11/2014 16:33, Thomas
> >> 
> >> Blasejewicz wrote:
> >>>>> (2014/11/24 23:18), Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> >>>>>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 22:56:34 +0900 Thomas Blasejewicz
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> <nyuwa at hb.tp1.jp> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Where should I look / do something to get this thing back
> >>>>>>> on track?
> > 
> > sorry type from me, it should be:
> > sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
> > sudo -i
> > apt-get update
> > apt-get dist-upgrade
> 
> THANK YOU!
> That apparently fixed a lot of things.
> I executed the commands you gave,
> got no error messages, and
> following the "upgrade" command the comuter got busy for something like
> 15 minutes.
> After that it asked for a reboot.
> 
> Now things seem to be "back to normal".
> 
> * I am NOT a computer geek and usually do NOT understand all that
> computer mumble-jumble associated with those "sudo" things.
> May I ask, what exactly I have doing here?
> That knowledge could come in handy in the future ...
> 
> Thank you.
> Thomas

When a package manager is performing it's duties, there is what is called a 
"lock file", the  presence of which tells it to not allow more than one 
instance running at the same time - it would be not fun if two or more users 
were trying to install/uninstall/update all at the same time. 

This lock file is normally removed when the tasks are complete, but it is 
possible for it to be left behind due to a crash, power loss, or similar 
thing.

The commands you used did three things:
(skipping the sudo -i part for simplicity's sake)

>>$sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
This is saying "As Admin, remove the file '/var/lib/apt/lists/lock'"
sudo is used here as the file in question is a system file, and requires admin 
privileges, and 'sudo' elevates you temporarily to have those permissions.

>> $ sudo apt-get update
This is refreshing the list of available packages

>> $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
This downloads and installs your updates.
The last two steps are basically command line versions of what Muon Updater 
does.


-- 
Clay Weber
https://kubuntuforums.net
http://kubuntu.org
http://claydoh.com