How to Resolve Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit…

I believe that some linux users, especially system administrators encountered this problem and get the message after issue the yum command:

Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid [pid number].
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...

Example :

[root@server /]# yum install [service name]
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 20360.
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: yum
    Memory :  19 M RSS (396 MB VSZ)
    Started: Sun Mar  6 21:06:51 2011 - 00:29 ago
    State  : Traced/Stopped, pid: 20360

Please hit ctrl-c; that’s the key combination to kill any currently running process in a bash shell or terminal.

Exiting on user cancel.

Solution 1:
To remove the pid, please issue command rm -f and follow with yum.pid path and [pid number]

[root@server /]# rm -f /var/run/yum.pid 20360

Solution 2:
Find out what is the locking up yum by running:

[root@server /]# ps aux | grep yum

Please take note on the [pid number] of the process and run this command to kill the process:

[root@server /]# kill -9 [insert pid]

19 comments on “How to Resolve Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit…”

Amit
January 13, 2012 at 6:28 pm

Truly good example

Reply
sheikh
February 20, 2012 at 3:42 am

thanks you very much to help me to resolve this error

THANK A LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTe

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omarelmorac
March 2, 2012 at 1:36 am

Cool post very helpful

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nooz
April 22, 2012 at 6:32 pm

this command kill -9 disconnected the internet connection how can i get it back ?

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Ram Iyer
April 4, 2013 at 1:12 pm

Will Solution 1 kill the yum process that is running? I don’t want that to happen sometimes when RHEL patch is running ..

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pacho
May 20, 2014 at 8:38 am

thanks!!!! solution 1 worked for me!

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Peter Nguyen
August 26, 2014 at 5:09 pm

It is workable! Thank you very much!

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sitesinindia
January 25, 2015 at 1:29 pm

Thanks, it worked. Just killed the process.
Jabong Deals

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senthamil
June 18, 2015 at 3:38 pm

Thank you so much it’s really very helpful

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sivakumar
December 24, 2015 at 9:53 pm

Thanks

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Ben
April 13, 2016 at 8:24 am

The 1st solution helped for me. Thanks)

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gopichand
November 4, 2016 at 9:08 pm

thnks

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pawan
December 4, 2016 at 5:48 pm

not working: if killing the process or deleting yum.pid. error gets change to

new error :failed to connect to 192.168.43.56:21; No route to host

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Muhammad Tufail
April 1, 2017 at 1:44 am

thanx to provide the solutions

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Bibhudutta Baliarsingh
May 2, 2017 at 10:08 pm

Thank You Dear

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openritwanz
July 24, 2017 at 10:52 am

Thanks it works

Reply
Joseph
September 24, 2017 at 5:31 pm

o the following to solve the problem:

cd /var/run
rm -f yum.pid

you could also update your yum afterward

yum -y update

Reply
mohammad
June 11, 2018 at 3:12 pm

Thank you very much
that’s great !

Reply