CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ansible
Hristo Stoyanov
Hristo Stoyanov

Reputation: 1698

Ansible 1.9.4 : Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation

I bumped into Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation issue: https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-apache/issues/50

I posted a lot of details in GitHub.

I googled a lot of "Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation" Ansible complaints, but no simple answer. Any help?

Upvotes: 30

Views: 49248

Answers (12)

James T Snell
James T Snell

Reputation: 1678

In my case, the silly problem was that I had the same host in my inventory, but under two different DNS names.

So, apt was legitimately locked in my case, because I had multiple ansible connections to the same host doing the same thing at the same time. Hah! Doh!

Upvotes: 1

hbceylan
hbceylan

Reputation: 1282

adding become: yes to the task is solved my problem.

- name: Install dependencies
  apt:
    name: "{{ packages }}"
    state: present
    update_cache: yes
  vars:
    packages:
    - package1
    - package2
    - package3
  become: yes

Upvotes: 0

surabhi gupta
surabhi gupta

Reputation: 55

I faced the same error while using ansible to set up a ceph cluster. Just running the ansible-playbook without sudo did the trick for me!

Upvotes: 0

user1018130
user1018130

Reputation: 195

In my case, ansible was trying to lock /var/lib/apt/lists/ which did not exist.

The error ansible gave me was Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation: Failed to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/: E:Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (2: No such file or directory)

Adding the lists directory fixed the issues:

- name: packages | ensure apt list dir exists
  file:
    path: /var/lib/apt/lists/
    state: directory
    mode: 0755

Upvotes: 6

Ifgeny87
Ifgeny87

Reputation: 101

https://serverfault.com/questions/716260/ansible-sudo-error-while-building-on-atlas

Check ps aux | grep apt output for suspicious processes.

Upvotes: -1

Moises Jafet
Moises Jafet

Reputation: 41

On my hosts file, I have some hosts that use a different user for sudo than the one Ansible uses for SSH so I had ansible_user and ansible_become_user specified for every host in the inventory.

In those hosts where ansible_user == ansible_become_user I got Failed to lock apt for exclusive operation.

The solution for me was to remove ansible_become_user line for those cases where the user is the same in both parameters.

Upvotes: 1

Luke Schlather
Luke Schlather

Reputation: 397

I had remote_user: root in my playbook, and this happened a lot. I couldn't figure out why, it was happening only on some roles but not others (but always at the same place.) I removed remote_user: root and it stopped happening. I just use --become and --become-user=root. (Which I was using, but it still was randomly failing to get a lock for some reason.)

Upvotes: 2

swvo
swvo

Reputation: 121

I know this question has been answered a long time ago, but for me, the solution was different. The problem was the update_cache step. I had this with every install step, and somehow that caused the "apt failed lock error". the solution was adding the update_cache as a seperate step, like so:

- tasks:
  - name: update apt list
    apt:
      update_cache: yes

Upvotes: 12

Douglas Lovell
Douglas Lovell

Reputation: 1607

The answer from @guaka was entirely correct for me. It lacks only one thing-- where to put become: yes.

In the following, there are three places the become might go. Only one of them is correct:

 - name: setup nginx web server
     #1 become: yes
     include_role:
       name: nginx
       #2 become: yes
     vars:
       ansible_user: "{{ devops_ssh_user }}"
       #3 become: yes

In position #2 you will get an unexpected parameter error, because become is not a parameter for the include_role module.

In position #3 the play will run, but will not execute as sudo.

Only in position #1 does become: yes do any good. become is a parameter for the task, not for the module. It is not a variable like ansible_user. Just to be clear, here's a working configuration:

 - name: setup nginx web server
     become: yes
     include_role:
       name: nginx
     vars:
       ansible_user: "{{ devops_ssh_user }}"

Upvotes: 4

Digvijay Sinha
Digvijay Sinha

Reputation: 99

Running the following commands in the same sequence as below should resolve this issue :

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

Upvotes: 9

the
the

Reputation: 21939

I'm also getting this error, while setting up a couple of new boxes. I'm connecting as root, so I didn't think it was necessary, but it is:

become: yes

Now everything works as intended.

Upvotes: 48

Hristo Stoyanov
Hristo Stoyanov

Reputation: 1698

Ok, so there is nothing wrong with Ansible, SSH or the role. It is just that apt in Debian can get really confused and lock itself out. As I was using a home-brewed Docker VM, I only had to recreate my image and container to get APT working again.

Upvotes: 0

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