Re: Problem with MergeList...

[Guillem Jover]

On Sat, 2012-11-24 at 17:58:53 +0000, Jose Luis Alarcon Sanchez wrote:
> > E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (1073741859: Resource
> > temporarily unavailable)
> > E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another
> > process using it?

> > Any fix for this, please?.
> > 
> > Thanks very much, in advance. 

You should have checked if there was any other process locking that
file, usually either a dpkg, apt or aptitude process running. And then
kill those. Removing the file is not the correct solution (the lock is
taken on the file itself, not by creating or removing it).

> I did:
> 
> # rm -v /var/lib/dpkg/*

Unfortunately, with this, you just destroyed your dpkg database. You
might be able to recover the status file from /var/backups/, but not
others, like the diversions and statoverride ones. I'll modify the
dpkg cron job to backup those in dpkg 1.17.x (for jessie), though.

> # apt-get update
> 
> and the problem seems solved. All the files on the directory was rewritten.

I'd expect the dpkg database to consist of empty files now?

Regards,
Guillem