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I was running out of space on an Ubuntu server, so I did this command to save space

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/apt/archives

However now when trying to do things with apt, I get the following errors:

E: Could not open lock file /var/cache/apt/archives/lock - open (2 No such file or directory)

E: Unable to lock the download directory

And things like 

Archive directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial is missing.

Clearly I have removed some directory structure. Is there some way to do a apt-get rebuild-var-tree or similar?

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not a 'proper' answer so it'll need to be a comment but next time you could try apt-get autoclean (or possibly apt-get clean) – Journeyman Geek Feb 5 '10 at 13:25
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protected by Community♦ Jun 5 '11 at 19:31

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1 Answer

up vote 9 down vote accepted

You need two things there: 

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/apt/archives/partial
sudo touch /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo chmod 640 /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Removing this directory manually is a bad idea generally. To clean archives cleanly, use:

sudo apt-get clean
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thanks it works fine My lenny is coming back – benoit Jan 29 '11 at 4:05
Under debian, I think we should not use sudo. simply use: mkdir -p /var/cache/apt/archives/partial touch /var/cache/apt/archives/lock chmod 640 /var/cache/apt/archives/lock – user83606 Jun 5 '11 at 16:49
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You should always use sudo. – bahamat Jun 5 '11 at 17:49
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