Adept Updater stalls, says database locked...

[Elswood]

I was upgrading to KDE 3.5.5 and it downloaded and began to apply the updates, then stalled, saying that something was broken. Now, I can't get in to either re-download or re-install. The message says:

"You will not be able to change your system settings in any way (install, remove or upgrade software), because another process is using the packaging system database (probably some other Adept application or apt-get or aptitude). Please close the other application before using this one."

But, I can't find any open instances of other processes using the packaging system! Can someone assist me with this one? Thanks!!!

[Fenyx]

Re: Adept Updater stalls, says database locked...

Open up Konsole and type in this command:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

[fitzhugh]

Re: Adept Updater stalls, says database locked...

Open up Konsole and type in this command:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

Thanks! I had the same problem and your suggestion fixed it. In looking up what the --configure -a was I ran across the following in the dpkg man page:

dpkg -C | --audit
Searches for packages that have been installed only partially on your system.  dpkg will suggest what to do with them to get them working.

I tried this and found that the last package I installed before the locking problem came up was not installed properly (I'm guessing it crashed while installing and the lock was left) - I had not realized but it meant I knew what to fix and what might well have been making my machine unstable recently. Perhaps running the -C option would be a good idea if you run into the locking problem.