Thank you. It worked
.
There was a file called .lock in the .bitcoin directory. It kept being recreated:
alan@alan:~/.bitcoin$ sudo rm -f .lock
alan@alan:~/.bitcoin$ sudo rm -f .lock
alan@alan:~/.bitcoin$ sudo rm -f .lock
alan@alan:~/.bitcoin$ sudo rm -f .lock
etc... Never a "file not found".
The solution was to send all commands in one line:
alan@alan:~/.bitcoin$ sudo rm -f .lock;cd ..;sudo rmdir .bitcoin
This deleted the .bitcoin directory before it could re-create its .lock file
Now what is the process which kept re-creating .lock? Would this still be running on my machine somewhere?
AG