Gutsy (KDE) fails commit during update and now prevents other package management from running

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Tried to kill the processes related to apt, adept, synaptic, and dpkg per information on another ubuntu forums thread. Don't know if that really applies to my situation but thought it worth the try. Then I tried to run Add/Remove Programs and it crashes as before. The short description is "The application Adept Installer (adept_installer) crashed and caused the signal 6 (SIGABRT). The crash handler suggests sending a bug report for this but since I did that and this was converted to a question I am going with it here. I captured the backtrace from the crash handler so here it is if this helps:

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Using host libthread_db library "/lib/libthread_db.so.1".
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[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread 47182028039024 (LWP 7526)]
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[KCrash handler]
#5 0x00002ae9661e4765 in raise () from /lib/libc.so.6
#6 0x00002ae9661e61c0 in abort () from /lib/libc.so.6
#7 0x00002ae965ade7b4 in __gnu_cxx::__verbose_terminate_handler ()
   from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#8 0x00002ae965adc746 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#9 0x00002ae965adc773 in std::terminate () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#10 0x00002ae965adc85a in __cxa_throw () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#11 0x00000000004fae31 in ?? ()
#12 0x00000000004fb4a4 in ?? ()
#13 0x00000000004fba1d in ?? ()
#14 0x00000000004e6df6 in ?? ()
#15 0x000000000045aa4c in ?? ()
#16 0x000000000043524a in ?? ()
#17 0x0000000000437285 in ?? ()
#18 0x00002ae9673ead76 in QObject::activate_signal ()
   from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#19 0x00002ae967758e51 in QSignal::signal () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#20 0x00002ae967409eeb in QSignal::activate () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#21 0x00002ae967410f1e in QSingleShotTimer::event ()
   from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#22 0x00002ae9673862a2 in QApplication::internalNotify ()
   from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#23 0x00002ae967388031 in QApplication::notify () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#24 0x00002ae966cc5308 in KApplication::notify ()
   from /usr/lib/libkdecore.so.4
#25 0x00002ae967318d12 in QApplication::sendEvent ()
   from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#26 0x00002ae96737955c in QEventLoop::activateTimers ()
   from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#27 0x00002ae96732d443 in QEventLoop::processEvents ()
   from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#28 0x00002ae96739f7e7 in QEventLoop::enterLoop () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#29 0x00002ae96739f5ef in QEventLoop::exec () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#30 0x00002ae967387d68 in QApplication::exec () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#31 0x00000000004324ec in ?? ()
#32 0x00002ae9661d0b44 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6
#33 0x0000000000432279 in ?? ()
#34 0x00007fff46597018 in ?? ()
#35 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()

Hi,

The contents of /var/log/apt/term.log* would be useful to
understand what is going on. Could you add them to
this question please?

Thanks,

James

Actually I was just about to add that I think this problem was solved. I looked in the term.log file and there are no entries for 2008.3.2 when this issue happened, only for today and also some early entries from the initial installation before date and time were set. Suspiciously blank on the desired time frame. This happened with a fresh install of kubuntu and on the first update attempted. There are, naturally, a great many updates. After searching in ubuntu forums for a few hours I finally found some information that was helpful. There were many ideas to try but none helped at first.

Here is what I did all in a terminal session:
To find the process numbers for each of dpkg, synaptic, apt, and adept I performed:
ps -ef | grep -i dpkg
ps -ef | grep -i synaptic
ps -ef | grep -i apt
ps -ef | grep -i adept

Then I performed

sudo kill -9 <proc#>

on each of those process numbers (don't recall now what the numbers are but the ps -ef | grep -i gives that information).

That still did not allow me to run adept package manager or Add/Remove Programs.

Then I performed

sudo apt-get update

This seemed to start working but then gave another error message suggesting I run:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

When I performed that last command everything seemed to clear up and started to work again. All of these commands were suggested in posts I found on the forums but hitting the right combination or performing the right one first was what I needed to find out.

Thanks for your interest in assisting on this issue. I am learning a lot about linux, and kubuntu in particular, through all of this. I am much more familiar with DOS and Windows having been involved in the hardware service side of computers since DOS 1.1 through the current Windows prison. I have dabbled in UNIX a little with military equipment while in the Air National Guard here in Iowa and also while working on contract supporting a State agency here. In the last year I have been playing around with kubuntu on an old "made for Windows" HP laptop and found that kubuntu runs better even though the hardware is optimized for Windows. In fact when I added a VMware server virtual machine using Windows as the guest OS I found that Windows running in a vm with linux as host runs better than Windows installed directly.

Well, now I am rambling. Thanks again.
rjs