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Ubuntu 20.04 apt-get update fails - cannot get apt lists lock

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#366 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
aws, docker, shell, ubuntu
Domain
cloud, devops, operating-systems

Research direction

Start with the get.docker.com installation script and locate the apt-get commands involved in the reported update failure. Check the proposed apt-version handling, then verify that installation succeeds when another apt process holds the lock and that existing supported environments are unaffected.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Installing docker on AWS EC2 on an Ubuntu 20.04.6 AMI using https://get.docker.com/ is failling for me with the below error:

+ sudo -E sh -c apt-get-update -qq >/dev/null
E; Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock. It is held by process 2023 (apt-get)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/

Looks like as of apt 1.9.11 there is an option to wait for the lock to be released rather than failing immediately: apt-get -o DPkg::Lock::Timeout=60 install FOO.

Could -o DPkg::Lock::Timeout=120 be added to any apt-get commands?

This can be used for apt version checking and adding the arg if apt version > 1.9:

APT_VERSION="$(apt --version | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -E '[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+')"
APT_ARGS=""
 
if [ "$(echo $APT_VERSION | cut -d '.' -f 1)" -gt 1 ]; then
  # apt version 2.0 or newer
  APT_ARGS="-o DPkg::Lock::Timeout=120"
elif [ "$(echo $APT_VERSION | cut -d '.' -f 2)" -gt 9 ]; then
  # apt version 1.10 or newer
  APT_ARGS="-o DPkg::Lock::Timeout=120"
fi
 
echo "APT_ARGS: '$APT_ARGS'"
echo apt-get $APT_ARGS update -q
apt-get $APT_ARGS update -q
Dominant language
Shell
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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