Problem

When executing Hipchat Server upgrade through the server's terminal/command-line, it hit into the following errors:

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
Updating system configuration, this may take a few minutes...
There was an unexpected error: Command '['sudo', '/opt/atlassian/hipchat/sbin/cs']' returned non-zero exit status 1

Cause

Another upgrade process is already running or stuck in the background so new attempt to run an upgrade command would generate the lock errors.

Resolution

1. Run the following commands to remove the locks:

   sudo dont-blame-hipchat
   ls -ahl /var/lib/apt/lists/
   rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
   ls -ahl /var/lib/dpkg/
   rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
   dpkg --configure -a
   

2. Re-attempt the upgrade:

   hipchat upgrade --force-upgrade