held by process 4663

[haarpanoid]

Hello!

Please be gentle, it is my first time  :002:

Tidying up the garage came across this forgotten notebook: Intel Atom, W7 Starter... the lot. I have not used it since 2017 if I remember correctly, and trying to update it gave me this error:

============ Log ===========

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is held by process 4663 (apt-get)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?


This was meant to be my introduction to the amazing world of Linux, but a man must admit his limitations. Any help is welcome, thanks.

[stevef]

That message is usually triggered when an update process is already active when a second update process is initiated.

Typically, it could be a routine background task looking for updates - especially if soon after booting - or a user session of the synaptics package manager already running when you tried the update.  Either of those will lock the update resources preventing a manually initiated update.

Either wait a bit (if it is a background task, it will finish) or close any package manager sessions before attempting to update.