Hi folks,

I'm trying to use aptitude to do the equivalent of "apt-get
dist-upgrade" on a system. aptitude downloads the new packages and then
reports:

Warning: could not lock the cache file.  Opening in read-only mode

It does not install the packages.

http://llistes.bulma.net/pipermail/bulmailing/Week-of-Mon-20040223/040687.html
tersely suggests "ps aux | grep apt", presumably by way of saying
"you're running some other apt process you turkey, stop it and all will
be right with the world" but I have done the following:

 1. Exited aptitude (the normal way, not by sending it any signal) and
 used "ps aux | grep apt" to check that there is no
 aptitude/apt/synaptic process happening on the machine. There are no
 such processes.

 2. Deleted every file named "lock" in /var (while aptitude was not
 running)

 3. Upgraded aptitude (running "aptitude install aptitude" on the
 commandline works, running "aptitude dist-upgrade" reports the same
 error though)

 4. Run apt-get autoclean

 5. Run apt-get clean

I've done 1-2 several times in fact.

In all cases, aptitude, once started in the normal fashion, downloads
any remaining packages and then reports "Warning: could not lock the
cache file.  Opening in read-only mode".

Anyone got any ideas? 

I haven't tried using "apt-get dist-upgrade" instead, because doing that
immediately destroys all of aptitude's painstakingly cached "this
program was installed to satisfy another program's dependencies and can
be removed when that program is" information, which is the reason I use
aptitude in the first place.

-Mary
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