Firefox Automatic Update Keeps Locking dpkg
I am running Ubuntu 18.04 and the current version of firefox is 112.0.1. The problem has occurred on two different machines.
My Friday routine normally involves updating my computers. Normally, I start firefox and get some preliminary work things out of the way before using sudo apt-get update/upgrade (sudo apt update) to update my system.
However, firefox has interjected and updated itself twice in the past month or so. When it says it has done the update and needs to be restarted, I click the button and it restarts. This would not be a problem since it was going to get updated anyway, however, when I go to start sudo apt-get upgrade to update the rest of my system, I get the following error:
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?
This lock traces back to firefox and persists for several hours. The first time I assumed something weird just happened resulting in the lock not being released when firefox restarted after its update. However, since this is the second time that it has happened there is something going on with your updater not releasing properly. Normally, the lock is released immediately after the updating software is finished updating, however, this is not the case with firefox right now.
Please fix this bug.
All Replies (3)
Sounds more like an OS issue than a browser issue. Have a look at a quick google search. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=%2Fvar%2Flib%2Fdpkg
Please, I did may own google search before coming here.
Furthermore, I checked every application on my machines that can update itself using dpkg. While all of them lock dpkg while they are updating (this is normal behavior), the only one that does not release the lock when it is finished IS Firefox. Furthermore, the lock remains even after restarting firefox, either when pushing the button when prompted by firefox or by quitting firefox through the file/quit option.
This would be the SUSE equivalent of firefox locking Zypper or rpm and maintaining the lock for several hours for no reason what so ever. I can override the lock and am not afraid of causing damage since the update is clearly finished, but I prefer things to work correctly from the start.
Is this (only) a problem with Firefox from the Ubuntu repositories or also with Firefox from the Mozilla server ?