I ran into some problems installing a package with apt. The terminal hung up during an install and I saw no other choice but to close the terminal. The problem, however, is that I can't seem to solve the issues that this has caused.
As is typical, I get:
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?
This gets me nowhere and I'm locked out until I run sudo dpkg --configure -a. Makes sense. However, this process spits the following out and then hangs on the last line:
Setting up virtualbox-dkms (5.2.10-dfsg-6) ...
Removing old virtualbox-5.2.10 DKMS files...
-------- Uninstall Beginning --------
Module: virtualbox
Version: 5.2.10
Kernel: 4.15.0-23-generic (x86_64)
-------------------------------------
Status: This module version was INACTIVE for this kernel.
depmod...
DKMS: uninstall completed.
------------------------------
Deleting module version: 5.2.10
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new virtualbox-5.2.10 DKMS files...
Building for 4.15.0-23-generic
Building initial module for 4.15.0-23-generic
A typical solution I've read is that you need to fix the broken packages. When I try to fix the broken packages (sudo apt install -f), the system also hangs on the same line, although the output is different:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up virtualbox-dkms (5.2.10-dfsg-6) ...
Removing old virtualbox-5.2.1
0 DKMS files...
------------------------------
Deleting module version: 5.2.10
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new virtualbox-5.2.10 DKMS files...
Building for 4.15.0-23-generic
Building initial module for 4.15.0-23-generic
I am unable to get out of it unless I kill the process. This I do by checking what is currently running related to apt (ps aux |grep apt), and then I kill the relevant processes with sudo kill -9 process_number_here.
If I try to run things after that, it tells me I still need to reconfigure dpkg.
I tried looking around for more solutions to dpkg and all I really see is the nuclear option:
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
I also delete the files in /var/lib/dpkg/updates because when I did some digging one of the files inside had the exact same text as the above long output… but I fully admit to being out of my league here and I don't know what to do.
Taking a look at the error messages, I recognize that it hangs on building something related to the kernel. But I have no idea where to even start solving that. Any help is appreciated. My system is ubuntu 18.04
Best Answer
The system is waiting for a password in the background.
This did the trick for me.