On Sun 12 Apr 2020 at 15:46:45 (+0200), to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 08:43:12AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: > > Using Synaptic I: > > 1. searched package names for "info" > > 2. selected it > > 3. clicked Apply > > 4. received error message saying > > >E: Could not open lock file /var/cache/apt/archives/lock - open (2: No > > >such file or directory) > > >E: Could not open file descriptor -1 > > >E: Unable to lock the download directory > > Question: is there a /var/cache/apt/archives directory? There should > be one.
The impression given by the FHS is that, upon deletion, the system should be able to recreate anything in a cache directory. I suspect that running something like apt-get update might do it. (It's not always clear exactly whose responsibility such recreation is.) 5.5. /var/cache : Application cache data 5.5.1. Purpose /var/cache is intended for cached data from applications. Such data is locally generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or calculation. The application must be able to regenerate or restore the data. Unlike /var/spool, the cached files can be deleted without data loss. The data must remain valid between invocations of the application and rebooting the system. Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application specific manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application must always be able to recover from manual deletion of these files (generally because of a disk space shortage). No other requirements are made on the data format of the cache directories. [FHS 3.0] Cheers, David.