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9

This question already has an answer here:

when I try to apt-get update I'm getting the below error,

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
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marked as duplicate by Ten-Coin, Radu Rădeanu, stephenmyall, Eric Carvalho, guntbert Aug 24 '13 at 11:33

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.
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@Mitch With the note that it is about /var/lib/apt/lists/lock rather than /var/lib/dpkg/lock. – gertvdijk Aug 22 '13 at 12:47
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@gertvdijk The OP's question is about /var/lib/apt/lists/lock, and the answer I refrenced also is about /var/lib/apt/lists/lockas well, especially the 4th and 11th answers. – Mitch♦ Aug 22 '13 at 12:54
up vote 43 down vote

This just means that there is an application using apt.

First try to find out which application it is by using this command in the terminal

ps aux | grep '[a]pt'

If there is a process running using apt (like apt-get or aptitude), the best thing to do is just to let it finish what its doing. Otherwise you can kill it using

kill <PID of the process (2nd column in output of ps aux)>

After making sure there is no process or killing it, you can just remove the lock using

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
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6  
drop the second pipe by adding some square brackets ps aux | grep [a]pt – Chris Montanaro Mar 28 '14 at 14:24
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The trick by @shtuff.it requires quotes for me ps aux |grep "[t]mux" . It works by changing the ps COMMAND listing for grep into grep [t]mux, which does not match the regex [t]mux . Clever. – here Apr 17 '14 at 18:03

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