Fix Ubuntu Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/) – Ubuntu Tutorial

By | January 18, 2020

When you are installing application on ubuntu, you may get this error: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/). In this tutorial, we will tell you how to fix this error.

For example, if you are installing openssh-server on ubuntu.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

You may get this error:

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

How to fix this error?

You can run these commands one by one.

sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Then, you can start to install openssh-server again.

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