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In Linux Mint, if I have an upgrade that is taking a long time, can I sudo shutdown -h +60 and walk away, or is there a better way? (piefed.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by sem@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/linux@programming.dev
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I don't want the system to shutdown in the middle of the upgrade, but I've already started the upgrade in the GUI.

Is there a better way, maybe involving the apt lock?

EDIT: Thank you for all the helpful suggestions. Hopefully this helps the next person. My upgrade actually finished on its own while I was posting. ๐Ÿ˜‚

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[-] TwilightKiddy@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

I suppose it would be useful for flakey internet connection, then your update would restart 5 minutes after losing the connection. It surely has a yucky aftertaste, though.

[-] fruitcantfly@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

No, the idea was that apt update would keep failing while the system upgrade was running (and holding the lock):

$ apt update
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock. It is held by process 1704856 (apt)
N: Be aware that removing the lock file is not a solution and may break your system.
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/

But there are better ways of waiting for a process to finish, that other people have shared

this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
40 points (100.0% liked)

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