Unable to update or upgrade

[Ninjin25]

Hello,

Trying to upgrade my Ubuntu server to 10.10, however it is giving me grief.

I first tried

Sudo apt-get upgrade, but I get the output

E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (1: Operation not permitted)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

So then I did sudo su and tried again still getting the same error.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

FYI sudo apt-get update gives me the same error.

Thanks in advance

[Rubi1200]

Hi and welcome to the forums :)

Did you by chance have more than one package manager open at the time?

This type of error is often seen if you are running, for example, apt-get and also have aptitude open etc.

Try closing all instances and then start again.

[Ninjin25]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I apologize, I'm not 100% to sure on how to check on instances that are running(Still learning).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can check for running instances by using ps -e?

If so I'm not seeing any other package manager that I recognize. Here is a copy of the output if it helps


PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:00 init
2 ? 00:00:00 kthreadd
3 ? 00:00:00 migration/0
4 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
5 ? 00:00:00 watchdog/0
6 ? 00:00:00 events/0
7 ? 00:00:00 cpuset
8 ? 00:00:00 khelper
9 ? 00:00:00 netns
10 ? 00:00:00 async/mgr
11 ? 00:00:00 pm
12 ? 00:00:00 sync_supers
13 ? 00:00:00 bdi-default
14 ? 00:00:00 kintegrityd/0
15 ? 00:00:00 kblockd/0
16 ? 00:00:00 kacpid
17 ? 00:00:00 kacpi_notify
18 ? 00:00:00 kacpi_hotplug
19 ? 00:00:00 ata/0
20 ? 00:00:00 ata_aux
21 ? 00:00:00 ksuspend_usbd
22 ? 00:00:00 khubd
23 ? 00:00:00 kseriod
24 ? 00:00:00 kmmcd
27 ? 00:00:00 khungtaskd
28 ? 00:00:00 kswapd0
29 ? 00:00:00 ksmd
30 ? 00:00:00 aio/0
31 ? 00:00:00 ecryptfs-kthrea
32 ? 00:00:00 crypto/0
36 ? 00:00:00 kstriped
37 ? 00:00:00 kmpathd/0
38 ? 00:00:00 kmpath_handlerd
39 ? 00:00:00 ksnapd
40 ? 00:00:00 kondemand/0
41 ? 00:00:00 kconservative/0
175 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
176 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
179 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_2
180 ? 00:00:00 usb-storage
221 ? 00:00:00 jbd2/sda1-8
222 ? 00:00:00 ext4-dio-unwrit
267 ? 00:00:00 upstart-udev-br
269 ? 00:00:00 udevd
400 ? 00:00:00 udevd
401 ? 00:00:00 udevd
421 ? 00:00:00 kgameportd
556 ? 00:00:00 portmap
579 ? 00:00:00 rpciod/0
669 ? 00:00:00 jbd2/sda6-8
670 ? 00:00:00 ext4-dio-unwrit
675 ? 00:00:00 jbd2/sda5-8
676 ? 00:00:00 ext4-dio-unwrit
709 ? 00:00:00 rsyslogd
719 ? 00:00:00 nfsiod
721 ? 00:00:00 sshd
730 ? 00:00:00 rpc.idmapd
761 tty4 00:00:00 getty
765 tty5 00:00:00 getty
777 tty2 00:00:00 getty
779 tty3 00:00:00 getty
783 tty6 00:00:00 getty
787 ? 00:00:00 cron
788 ? 00:00:00 atd
824 ? 00:00:00 mdadm
859 tty1 00:00:00 getty
860 ? 00:00:00 sshd
928 ? 00:00:00 sshd
929 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
1013 ? 00:00:00 flush-8:0
1016 pts/0 00:00:00 ps

[Rubi1200]

What does the output of
cat /etc/*release show?

Also post if there are errors with this command:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

[Ninjin25]

Doing cat /etc/*release gave me the following



DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS" sudo dpkg --configure -a error



dpkg: you do not have permission to lock the dpkg status database

xc
EDIT: I should mention that several weeks ago I was messing with the chattr command. From what I was reading generally speaking chattr +a is a favorable attribute for /var, so I did this. However, since then I have done chattr -a and -i (just in case I did use the chattr +i) to remove those attribute from that directory

[Rubi1200]

I know this sounds silly, but did you use the command exactly as you originally posted?

Sudo apt-get upgrade

If so, you need to use lowercase = sudo not Sudo.

I am looking for solutions, but haven't found anything yet.

[Ninjin25]

Sorry, the capital "S" on my initial inquiry was by habit.

Exact syntax is

sudo apt-get upgrade


I'm not sure if you got to review my edit on my last post prior to posting so I will quote it


EDIT: I should mention that several weeks ago I was messing with the chattr command. From what I was reading generally speaking chattr +a is a favorable attribute for /var, so I did this. However, since then I have done chattr -a and -i (just in case I did use the chattr +i) to remove those attribute from that directory

[Rubi1200]

I think you may need to check the status of your permissions:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/en/man1/chattr.1.html

[Ninjin25]

Well I cross checked my permissions and attributes with a working Ubuntu box , and everything appears to be correct. However, I'm not 100% positive on what I should be looking for or what commands need to be ran.

Ultimately I'm just going to reinstall, this is just a play/learning system with anything important backed up. Thanks again for all your help. If you can think of something within the next 48 hours(I won't be reinstalling for another day or more) I'm more than willing to look into it.

[Ninjin25]

Well, since reinstalling isn't currently an option I'm going to continue working on this and got it working.

What I found was that the /var directory did have the append attribute, which I already suspected from the very beginning. Any time I would try to remove the attribute with
sudo chattr -a /var, then do lsattr on that directory the append attribute would still be present. Today it came to me while taking a nap at work, I realized a serious problem in what I was trying to do! I was trying remove this attribute from the parent directory.Stupid me trying to apply an attribute to a parent directory with out using the -V option.

After running
sudo chattr -V -a /var I was able to successfully upgrade my system.

Thank you very much for all your assistance with this matter, all that''s left is trying to get my local hostname back.

You may close this thread :D