How to fix “Could not open lock file” because “Permission denied”?

Question

Whenever trying to install any software and update manger,

I get an error stating

Package operation failed
The installation or removal of a software package failed

When I run sudo apt-get update I got this result:

conan51xd@conan51xd-Lenovo-B470:~$ sudo apt-get -f install
[sudo] password for conan51xd: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
conan51xd@conan51xd-Lenovo-B470:~$ apt-get update
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

Answer 1

Run this command:
sudo mv /var/lib/apt/lists{,july12}

sudo apt-get update
Then sudo apt-get upgrade

Answer 2

E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

This line says you are not authorized to install/update. You need to be root to do it....

You can add sudo before apt-get or you can do sudo -s to be root.

Example: sudo apt-get update

or

sudo -s will consider you as root until you close your terminal.

Then

apt-get update