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I am new to Linux (installed Ubuntu for the first time yesterday), and have never dealt with any unix-based OS. I started using Linux for the sole purpose of collaborating code with my partners via git. I first needed to install jdk/jre. However, when i tried to install it, like so:

ben@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless

I got this message: 

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 cannot get git to install either, so I don't think it is a problem with the specific package I selected. Can someone explain what that error means, and how to deal with it?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

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Have you tried just rebooting? An error like that usually indicates that another package manager has locked the whole system. If you reboot, it should not persist. – Splinter of Chaos Jun 26 '12 at 22:18
@SplinterofChaos I'll try that, thanks. – Ben7005 Jun 26 '12 at 22:21
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@Ben7005 I'd hold off on the rebooting and wait for your downloads to finish – Levon Jun 26 '12 at 22:25

1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Do you have the GUI package manager/or update manager programs running? If so there's a conflict, simply close those programs down and your command line should work.

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I am downloading some software from the software center... I'll finish that and see if it works. – Ben7005 Jun 26 '12 at 22:22
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@Ben7005 That's most likely it .. in fact trying to use both of those GUI programs at the same time will result in the same error message, so I'd not be surprised you'd get this with the command line while something else is going on. – Levon Jun 26 '12 at 22:25
1  
That's definitely it. Only one of aptitude, apt-get, dpkg and the software centre can install at the same time. They use a lock on /var/lib/dpkg/lock to ensure that, hence the error message. – Alexios Jun 26 '12 at 23:20
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Either that or one of the above frontends was /very/ rudely interrupted mid-install and its dpkg backend was still hanging on to the lock. Can sometimes happen running aptitude remotely and losing connection while dpkg was waiting for user input (eg, to tell it what to do with a modified config file) – Shadur Jun 27 '12 at 7:55
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check if the lockfile exists, and if there is no dpkg/apt process running, delete it. – Aurelien Jun 27 '12 at 9:03
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