message on ubuntu 20.10 upgrade

[s9032g@comcast.net]

Did upgrade from 20.04 to 20.10 and all seems well except this message:

All packages are up to date.
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), are you root?

Anything that I need to do?

[SeijiSensei]

No, it's fine. Try running "sudo apt update". Did you get an error?

[ActionParsnip]

Key bit to read here is "are you root?" :cool:

[s9032g@comcast.net]

So far as I know I am root. That is why I am asking.

[s9032g@comcast.net]

Seiji

No error, looks fine

[Impavidus]

Without seeing the exact command you used, combined with the full output, there isn't much we can say.

Did you use a root shell or was the shell running under your normal user ID?

[SeijiSensei]

He was just subject to the locking issue that comes up with apt sometimes.

[s9032g@comcast.net]

command used was "sudo apt update && apt upgrade". The result posted in my thread starter were the last lines of the result.

This command was suggested in Foss instructions for upgrading to 20.10 from 20.04. This was the last step.

[s9032g@comcast.net]

I think that someone might ask me to see the entire result so here it is:

steven@steven-Latitude-E7240:~$ sudo apt update && apt upgrade
[sudo] password for steven:
Hit:1 http://la-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu groovy InRelease
Hit:2 http://la-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu groovy-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://la-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu groovy-security InRelease
Hit:4 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu groovy InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), are you root?
steven@steven-Latitude-E7240:~$

[ajgreeny]

SeijiSensei was right when he said "He was just subject to the locking issue that comes up with apt sometimes."

If you've ever tried using synaptic, which I used to use but seldom do nowadays, that quite often seems to throw that error message when you click the Apply button; repeating the action seems to work the second time in my experience so try repeating the same command immediately and it may well work fine.

[Impavidus]

command used was "sudo apt update && apt upgrade". The result posted in my thread starter were the last lines of the result.

This command was suggested in Foss instructions for upgrading to 20.10 from 20.04. This was the last step.

That will run "apt update" with sudo, but will run "apt upgrade" without.

[garvinrick4]

Reboot should solve and easier code other than && is.

sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade

If you using terminal at time of reboot -r is reboot and -h shutdown

sudo shutdown -r now

sudo shutdown -h now

[s9032g@comcast.net]

I tried repeating 3 times with same results. Since everything is working fine I am going to write this off to some tech thing and mark it SOLVED