I just reinstalled Kali Linux in my PC and after my first logon, I tried to run apt-get update and had E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) error coming up. Interesting, because I am the only user (I just installed the system) and there’s no other process using dpkg. This was pretty annoying as it stops you from installing updates or new softwares. Here’s a run down of the issues:

“E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock” error

This happens when I tried to use apt-get update


root@kali:~# apt-get update
Hit http://http.kali.org sana InRelease       
Hit http://security.kali.org sana/updates InRelease
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Hit http://security.kali.org sana/updates/non-free amd64 Packages              
Fetched 9,334 kB in 2min 18s (67.5 kB/s)                                       
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?

Trying to fix the error

Tried multiple steps

Try 1 – Rebooting:

At this point I tried restart and see if that makes any differences. It didn’t.

Try 2: – try with sudo

I tried using sudo to see if this was related with this other error dpkg: warning: ‘ldconfig’ not found in PATH or not executable.

root@kali:~# sudo apt-get update
Hit http://http.kali.org sana InRelease                                   
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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?

sudo didn’t fix it.

Try 3 – Try Googling

Like some search results returned, I tried to delete lock file

root@kali:~# rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Then update

root@kali:~# apt-get update
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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?

Nope still no luck.

Try 4 – Actually read the error!

Then I actually read the freaking error which I didn’t do till now. Duh, the error is:

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?

Which indicates that the lock file is in /var/lib/dpkg/lock folder. Silly me! So let’s have a look into /var/lib/dpkg/ folder to confirm is there is really a lock file in there?

root@kali:~# rm /var/lib/dpkg/
alternatives/   diversions-old  parts/          status-old
available       info/           statoverride    triggers/
diversions      lock            status          updates/

There is a lock file. So let’s delete that.

root@kali:~# rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

and then try to update again

root@kali:~# apt-get update
Hit http://security.kali.org sana/updates InRelease
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Reading package lists... Done                                                  
root@kali:~#

Booyaa. Worked just fine. Well, ofc it does, when you can write and read properly!!!!

Now just to be on safe side, let’s do an apt-get upgrade

root@kali:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  armitage gr-osmosdr iceweasel john john-data libgnuradio-osmosdr0.1.3
  libgnutls-deb0-28 libgnutls-openssl27 libsnmp-base libsnmp-perl libsnmp30
  openvas python-hpack python-impacket python-pyperclip snmp snmpd
17 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/70.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 12.8 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Reading changelogs... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 323261 files and directories currently installed.).
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root@kali:~#

Yeah .. working well. and finally finish it with installing gimp.

root@kali:~# apt-get install gimp
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gimp-data libamd2.3.1 libbabl-0.1-0 libcamd2.3.1 libccolamd2.8.0
  libcholmod2.1.2 libcolamd2.8.0 libgegl-0.2-0 libgimp2.0 libopenraw1
  libumfpack5.6.2
Suggested packages:
  gimp-help-en gimp-help gimp-data-extras
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gimp gimp-data libamd2.3.1 libbabl-0.1-0 libcamd2.3.1 libccolamd2.8.0
  libcholmod2.1.2 libcolamd2.8.0 libgegl-0.2-0 libgimp2.0 libopenraw1
  libumfpack5.6.2
0 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 15.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 70.9 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Get:1 http://http.kali.org/kali/ sana/main libamd2.3.1 amd64 1:4.2.1-3 [26.3 kB]
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Fetched 15.7 MB in 2min 37s (99.8 kB/s)                                                                                                                                                                           
Selecting previously unselected package libamd2.3.1:amd64.
(Reading database ... 323276 files and directories currently installed.)
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Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-18) ...
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47) ...
root@kali:~#

Perfect.

Moral of this post

Sometimes it really helps when you actually read the error and not just follow Google search results blindly. Same applies to my posts, use your judgment, 9 out of 10, you’re probably bang on the money.