update manager

[David Curtis]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Leslie Lewis <lesliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:

> If a previous process that uses apt-get (Synaptic, Software Centre,
> whatever) terminated abnormally there will be a lock file left behind that
> keeps it from running again. it's been a while since I had that problem, so
> I'm afraid i can' t  remember precisely where it is. I'm running Synaptic
> just now to see where files called 'lock' have been put, and there's a
> directory in /var called lock that seems to have just been created. If you
> delete that it might help.
>

Whoa, hold on a sec, /var/lock is a traditional location for creating lock
files for system device files. If you remove it you could possibly harm some
essential parts of Ubuntu.

Besides, the locations for lock files in regards to apt and dpkg are
/var/cache/apt/archives/lock and /var/lib/dpkg/lock as James pointed out
above.

And really you should not be removing lock files unless you are absolutely
sure there is no running process that is using the locked resource, the
potential for harm is obvious, especially with the package database. You at
least need to run ps or pgrep to see if an update is running in the
background, which seems to me to be the most probable cause of the OP's
issue. As Leigh suggested a reboot is good as unattended updates (security
updates) are gracefully interrupted during shutdown.

Dave
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