Comment 3 for bug 612296

Same problem, approx fails to install (and remove) on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop amd64, approx 4.1-1build1.

After manually killing 'sudo apt-get install approx' and fixing with 'sudo dpkg --configure -a', approx refused to remove with apt. This could be fixed by some more killing of installation processes.

Haithamoon: Your second installation attempt looks like you have the locking problem (side effect of the bug):
"debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable". You might want to kill the rest of the dpkg processes, see below.

$ sudo apt-get -y remove approx
...
Removing approx ...
debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable
dpkg: error processing approx (--remove):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 approx

$ sudo dpkg --remove --force-all approx
...
debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable
dpkg: error processing approx (--remove):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 1

$ ps waux|grep -i dpkg
root 15013 0.0 0.1 54036 11580 ? S 11:45 0:00 /usr/bin/perl -w /usr/share/debconf/frontend /var/lib/dpkg/info/approx.postinst configure
[..]
$ sudo kill 15013

$ sudo apt-get -y remove approx
...
Removing approx ...

And finally it was removed successfully.