**NEVERMIND! I rebooted and the problem went away. I was able to update.**
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I got a pop-up balloon on my FC6 desktop saying that there were some packages available for update. I click on it and then I get a popup that says, "Another application is running which is accessing software information." I have to click 'ok' and close it.

Now what do I do? I tried accessing it minutes later but I still get the same error. What's going on????

Just a thought. Do you have a terminal open with root access? If so exit out as root.

No I did not have anything open. For some reason it just needed a reboot to download the updates. Everything is working fine now. Had me scared for awhile! Oh yeah, and I am running FC6 in VMware so maybe that had something to do with it.

i get this error when i try and run the add/remove software application

i'm not logged in as root in terminal any ideas?

The problem is caused by the yum-updatesd daemon running in the background. I disabled it and I've never had that problem since.

that code don't work it says bash chkconfig

The "#" sign means that you need to be root. Cheers.

thanks i am logged in as root but still saying bash chkconfig

Can you post the full error message please?

The problem occurs because yum is built so that only one instance of the program may run at once (to prevent situations where you might be installing some software while removing it at the same time, or installing some software twice at the same moment). All yum processes are considered to be "the same" in this sense, so if you're running a manual yum-install, using the automatic update manager which uses yum, installing software using the graphical tool which lets you choose packets or anything else, you can only run one of these at a time.

Don't be logged in as root, it's unsafe if not stupid. Instead use sudo (first you must probably configure it to let your preferred user use it) if you just can, it's safer than logging in as root, or use just su to become root and exit it when you don't need it anymore.

Try this first:
And if it's not found, find out where this program lies (if it's installed):
..or if you can't use sudo because you haven't configured it,
The updatesd is probably a "needed" process if it's installed, so I'm not sure if you really should disable it; instead, find out if it should really be running all the time, or why is it running and when should it be running -- does it do something at the moment or has it jammed?

Also, if you can't figure out which yum process is the "problem", try
to see if any are running. If yes, see if you do want to run it and if not, use kill to stop it. If no yum processes are running but yum claims so, the pid file might not be removed for some reason (like a crash of some kind) so yum thinks it's running though it isn't. In this case remove the pid file.

I am new to Linux/FC too and I faced the same problem. I did exactly what bouncer said and it worked. Now I can run Add/Remove software or Software Update, thanks a lot.

you can also turn off updatedb from "system settings" "server settings" "services" just unclick the box next to updatedb

and following what 'Decreipt' said, if you don't find the updatedb service, look for the yum-updatesd service. You can stop it temporarily using the 'stop' button if you want.

Hey guys, I'm a big newb but yum appeared to continue to run after the fact of stopping it under services.. I actually had to remove yum all together but this worked great

# Stop the yum-updatesd daemon:

su -c 'service yum-updatesd stop'


# Remove the yum-updatesd package:

su -c 'yum remove yum-updatesd'

# You may now update using pup and install software via pirut. However because you will not be notified when updates are available, be sure to run yum update regularly:

su -c 'yum update'