This may me a dumb question... I just switched from Debian to Mepis(not sure what version, but at least a year old) I tried to do a dist-upgrade and got this error...

root@4[eneu]# apt-get dist-upgrade
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?

Any ideas? Thanks.

Probably what it says - try 'lsof lock' and see if another process has it opened. Maybe an auto-updater (or a zombie) or something.

What ver. of KDE are you running? (It's vertically on the left side of the K menu.) You can determine the MEPIS ver. from that.

Does the box still work?

Did you change your sources.lst to point to the new repos.?

Do you have broadband 'Net access?

Why didn't you just do a fresh install, perhaps on a separate partition?

What ver. of KDE are you running? (It's vertically on the left side of the K menu.) You can determine the MEPIS ver. from that.

---3.5---

Does the box still work?

---yes it does---

Did you change your sources.lst to point to the new repos.?

---yes, I tried installing e17. That is when I got this error---

Do you have broadband 'Net access?

---yes---

Why didn't you just do a fresh install, perhaps on a separate partition?

---this was a fresh install off the live cd, I was using debian before, but had a lot of 'x' errors, so I switched to Mepis.---

ok, this is what I got... don't know what it means.

root@2[eneu]# lsof lock
lsof: status error on lock: No such file or directory
lsof 4.76
latest revision: ftp://lsof.itap.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof/
latest FAQ: ftp://lsof.itap.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof/FAQ
latest man page: ftp://lsof.itap.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof/lsof_man
usage: [-?abhlnNoOPRstUvVX] [+|-c c] [+|-d s] [+D D] [+|-f]
[-F [f]] [-g [s]] [-i [i]] [+|-L [l]] [+m [m]] [+|-M] [-o [o]]
[-p s] [+|-r [t]] [-S [t]] [-T [t]] [-u s] [+|-w] [-x [fl]] [--] [names]
Use the ``-h'' option to get more help information.
root@2[eneu]#

The output from lsof just means the file doesn't actually exist. I thought from your original error that it did. Sorry, I can't think what else it would be, not being very familiar with dpkg or debian/mepis. All that comes to mind is weird stuff like if /var was on a separate read-only partition or unmounted altogether or something, that'd screw things up.

KDE 3.5 means you are using SimplyMEPIS 6.0 or possibly 6.5.


From Post #1: From Post #4: Does this mean you 1st did a fresh install of MEPIS on the partition that was originally Debian, followed by an attempt to do a dist-upgrade in MEPIS, or what? I'm afraid your posts don't seem consistent to me.

In any case, the quickest path to a working installation is to attempt a truly fresh install, preferably on a virgin partition.

Do you have any data in the current partition that you need to save?

How much experience do you have w/ partitioning?

What are the basic specs of the box:

• CPU (w/ MHz)?
• RAM?
• drive size(s)?

I am using a Toshiba Satellite with a P4 M 2.80GHz (1598.938MHz). RAM is 512. And a 60GB is partitioned to 2.31GB-SWAP, 10GB-/HOME, and 47.69-/. I deleted all existing partitions prior to this install. I ran dist-upgrade to ensure that I have the latest release(something that I had learned using Debian).

Did you open Synaptic or KPackage? (try Microsoft trick reboot and see if that lock gets cleared)

Never thought about it...Synaptic was open every time that I tried it... works fine now. Thanks.