Debian update manager states updates available but won't update
 

Since yesterday update manager states that there are updates. when I mouse over it says that there are 94 updates, I click on update manager icon it opens & starts scanning then does nothing, it doesn't say "Your system is up to date" & the curser doesn't show that it's working although there is hd activity.
The only software that is installed manually is Firefox & Google Chrome
Os Debian Squeeze
Acer Aspire 3620

what happens when you manually update, any errors? Or is it just GUI frontend that is having problems?

If I try aptitude update, I get the message can't get exclusive lock is another package using it
same with opening synaptic.
I scanned var directory & have 2.2G free space also.

disable gnome update manager from starting in System > Preferences > Startup Applications. Untick update manager, relogin and try aptitude again. Basically , you need to kill the update manager as its holding lock on dpkg and for some reason won't release the lock. With luck, manual update will fix the issue.

I'll try that.
Here's my sources.list & what update manager is doing.

It appears your solution is working, after disabling update notifier I went to synaptic & marked the upgradeable packages and it's downloading now.
I'll post results as soon as it's done.

After marking upgrades it stopped with a message stating "Samba untrusted domaine defaults to no", so I umarked the samba upgrades & it is updating.
The update completed.
The 2 files I didn't upgrade were libsmbclient & libwbclient0 what affects might I have due to not upgrading them. Also I haven't enabled file sharing, yet so are they necessary for functionality of os? As of now this thread is solved & will be marked as so, just would like to know the possible affects of samba not being upgraded. Btw thank you rizzy.

Update after posting last question I went back to Synaptic & selected the 2 upgradeable packages & they did. I guess they couldn't be done along with the other packages.

GUI package management apps are all a pita.

aptitude update
aptitude upgrade
or
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Are much safer and tend to work much much better.

Thanks craigvail
I had my machine set to notify of updates, once notified the commands wouldn't work, but now I know.
I can still set to recieve update notifications that way I know that they're available, if I have the same problem disable notifier.

You can get update "notices" easily by just "reloading" synaptic. As opposed to Update Mangler, Synaptic has a pretty good track record and gives, particularly if configured correctly (default configuration is pretty good), much better information on what is being upgraded and what is not.

I disable Update Mangler as the very first step in setting up a new install of ANY Debian based OS. I do not want it to even check for updates let alone notify me. I certainly do not let it run updates.

Even if you allow it to notify you, I would highly recommend apt-get, aptitude or, if you want a gui to run update/upgrades, Synaptic to do the actual work. You will be a lot safer and have many fewer problems for very little extra effort.

Thanks widget my system was set for notify, but only way I could get the update to run was to ignore samba upgrade, then after upgrade I was able to upgrade samba. The problem with my upgrade was "Samba defaulting to No" because of "untrusted domaine".

+1

Purge all of the gui stuff like update manager and notifier and just use the cli apt tools. I prefer aptitude to apt-get but that's just down to personal choice. If you're running stable and want to automate updates have a look into cron-apt. testing/unstable users should certainly not be using gui apt tools anyway.

I am on testing and that is right. I do open synaptic because it is there and it is a handy place to do casual browsing of available packages.

I have always preferred apt-get but am growing in my appreciation of some of the features of aptitude.

The "real" package managers supplied with Debian are just real hard to beat.

I'm just glad that the issue I was experiencing didn't take days to resolve.The presence of that update was causing my machine to freeze.Now that everything was updated it's back to normal. The only problem that I have now is it freezes while watching hulu. But I think that problem is related to Intel915 garaphics & hulu itself.