Install Updates error - can't get dpkg frontend lock

[D_Blaze]

Hi there, (i'm new to Linux)
I'm just running through the manual and i followed the procedure to install updates however i'm getting the following error:
============ Log ===========

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?


Also, when i go to open Install/Remove  Software now i get ' unable to get exclusive lock'.

It seems that another package management program is running, but nothing is appearing on my desktop. I looked at Task Manager but nothing appears to be there apart from 'FireFox (and four file under that) and Task Manager (and many files under that).
Cheers
Daniel

[D_Blaze]

Update.

So after a while (10 mins or so) a dialogue pop-up appeared out of nowhere saying something like 'updating boot manager' or something like that and then another dialogue saying software updates installed (or similar). So it appears to me that the software updater was running in the background but just wasn't showing up anywhere for me to see and recognize that it was already running.

Cheers
Daniel

[Artim]

Maybe you have it set to do updates automatically?