Hipchat dpkg in error state

[Gerald Schneider]

While trying to update hipchat (which hangs) I noticed that dpkg is in an error state:

admin@hipchat:~$ hipchat upgrade --check
The current channel for upgrades is: production
Current Version is: Atlassian HipChat 2.2.9 (2018.01.23.110010)
An upgrade is available: 2.4.0 (2018.05.10.074812)
admin@hipchat:~$ hipchat upgrade --upgrade
Expected sha512sum and filename: e86b4eff1824b3dac6b0b90c9af1a4ea5cdd265a06980f16ee35247cffd12105752b23d71bd166c013d9706150d34b7ed0c8654f030af590efe88f59f2ab4fa8 hcs-2.4.0-2018.05.10.074812.tar.gz
Downloading the update, this may take a few minutes depending on your network speeds
Calculated sha512sum: e86b4eff1824b3dac6b0b90c9af1a4ea5cdd265a06980f16ee35247cffd12105752b23d71bd166c013d9706150d34b7ed0c8654f030af590efe88f59f2ab4fa8 hcs-2.4.0-2018.05.10.074812.tar.gz
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
Updating system configuration, this may take a few minutes...

Trying to run the command it seems that the admin user is not allowed to do so:

admin@hipchat:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
[sudo] password for admin:
Sorry, user admin is not allowed to execute '/usr/bin/dpkg --configure -a' as root

Do I really have to boot the VM from a live CD and chroot into the system to repair dpkg? Or is there an easier way?

[Gerald Schneider · Accepted solution]

It seems like there was a second upgrade process running in the background, later the error message didn't appear anymore. The server is still broken, but that's a different question.