Fixing “E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)” error

Friday, 15th October 2010

You’ve probably encountered the error:

“E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)” After executing:

debian:~# apt-get update
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the list directory

There are plenty of reasons which might have led you into this shitty situation, anyways the solution is:

debian:~# killall -9 apt-get aptitude
debian:~# rm -f /var/lib/apt/lists/lock

killall -9 apt-get aptitude might not be really necessary, if there are no hanged apt-get or aptitude processes, however I show it heresince sometimes, it might be the problem cause.

If you further or beforehand get the error:
,br /> 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?

Then you will have to also delete the /var/lib/dpkg/lock.

debian:~# rm -f /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Hopefully this should be enough for you to solve your apt-get update issues.


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This entry was posted on Friday, October 15th, 2010 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Linux, System Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

20 Responses to “Fixing “E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)” error”

  1. Baptiste says:
    November 10, 2010 at 1:40 am

    Thanks 🙂
    worked like a charm

    Reply
  2. Drill says:
    February 21, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    Thanks so much. Magical solution

    Reply
  3. cengiz says:
    April 11, 2011 at 2:04 am

    This is really… magical solution… THX

    Reply
  4. mrdwab says:
    July 14, 2011 at 10:19 am

    This was the only solution I found that worked. (I had to be sudo though.)

    Thanks!

    Reply
  5. Tirpox says:
    September 11, 2011 at 3:32 pm

    Thanks very much, I have Ubuntu 10.10 and worked me (the first command didn’t worked me) but when I put the remove, like a magic 🙂
    Thanks again

    Reply
  6. AlexKaper says:
    September 11, 2011 at 9:14 pm

    tanks.
    it’s work carefully.

    Reply
  7. CeeJay says:
    September 15, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    Hey, Thanx for the solution. Worked brilliantly

    Reply
  8. Ur fan says:
    September 18, 2011 at 8:53 pm

    lol….max…..we are badly need of this…..thank u soooooooooo much……….

    Reply
  9. udana says:
    September 21, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    maxxxxa… THANKS

    Reply
  10. tanzzel says:
    October 13, 2011 at 7:00 am

    thanks

    Reply
  11. raghavendra says:
    November 27, 2011 at 5:48 pm

    thanks ….it works fine

    Reply
  12. avidms says:
    December 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm

    thanks.. it works

    Reply
  13. Mehdavi says:
    December 28, 2011 at 12:22 am

    I have tried the above commonds and I am getting the following messagerm: cannot remove `/var/lib/dpkg/lock’: Permission denied
    why plzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    Reply
    • admin says:
      December 28, 2011 at 3:22 pm

      Hi Mehdavi,

      What Linux distribution are you running? Did you tried everything described in the article, are you 100% sure
      /var/lib/dpkg/lock is not existing.

      best
      Georgi

      Reply
  14. Arnold says:
    December 28, 2011 at 5:03 am

    Thank you Kiss

    Reply
  15. cnreema says:
    February 25, 2012 at 1:48 pm

    Yeah! *-* This is the only solution that worked! 🙂

    Reply
  16. Arik says:
    April 28, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    This is helping me on 12.04…
    Thanks for sharing….

    Reply
  17. ilPider says:
    May 19, 2012 at 6:42 am

    many thanks
    useful also on 12.04

    Reply

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