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I wanna ask why when i use root to do job can't do more one in another places like terminal or ubuntu software center and this message appear "is another process using it"

here is pic to explain what I mean

enter image description here

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It looks to me that you are trying to run two instances of apt-get (or apt-get and software center). That is not possible (the error you mentioned is related to that). Issue you are having should not be connected to root account. – Milan Todorovic Dec 14 '12 at 12:10
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in addtion to @MilanTodorovic: you can not run two instance of software installation at same time because it may lead to a an instable state of the OS. To maintain stability they lock the admin directory. You can search for deadlock in google, ubuntu will face same kind of situation if allowed – Web-E Dec 14 '12 at 12:16
thanks for help people i'm really didn't think about stability thank you milan and web-e about help and i'm very sorry about my bad language – Mahmoud20070 Dec 14 '12 at 12:21
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@Web-E : I don't think that's a given for all software. Some software can, some can't. And not all that can't will lead to "instable state of the OS" – Nanne Dec 14 '12 at 13:02

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

There is no inherent reason you cannot "do a lot of jobs in the same time".

But some jobs are not meant to run at the same time. This is usually implemented by locking something.

In this case, you can imagine an update needing the current state of your machine, but it has to be sure nothing changed. If you are updating somehting (installing package X) and you run a different update that needs package X as well, it will ALSO try to install that package

Therefore, apt (or aptitude, or anything using the ubuntu package system) should not run at the same time, and uses this lock file mechanism to check.

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thanks for help man – Mahmoud20070 Dec 14 '12 at 15:04

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