How to fix E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock problem

You got following message when you try to run apt-get update command in Ubuntu?

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)

E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/

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?

Solution

You can delete the lock file with the following command:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock

You may also need to delete the lock file in the cache directory

sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Now re-execute this

sudo apt-get update