Public key not available

**stillious** · January 28th, 2009

Hi guys

I have a problem when running apt-get update, where the below error is returned:

Code:

Fetched 308B in 0s (1273B/s)
Reading package lists... Done
W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY C71839136CF5CE97
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

Running apt-get update again does not fix the above error. At first (because of my noobness) I thought it might be a duff entry in sources.list, but this does not seem to be the case :/ Do I need to install a key, but it doesn't know where to find it?

Any help appreciated

**stillious** · January 28th, 2009

OK so after some Googling, I found an answer of sorts and managed to get a solution. In my case I entered the following:

Code:

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv C71839136CF5CE97

Then

Code:

gpg --export --armor C71839136CF5CE97 | sudo apt-key add -

Then a good old update to finish off

Code:

sudo apt-get update

Fixed

**rebegin** · January 28th, 2009

hey,
thanks, i was looking for exactly the same thing.

**greyfox1** · January 30th, 2009

Wow, kudos for posting this stillious! I was getting this error and your solution worked like a charm! In my case, I was getting the error with different keys, so I just had to plug mine into the commands and now I'm set. I just wish the "thanks" button were working right now

Cheers!

**rebegin** · January 30th, 2009

hehe, that's just funny that i was looking for the "thanks" button for like 10 minutes but no luck. now i know at least that it's simply not around here nowadays

**Mickser_52** · January 30th, 2009

Just adding my thanks! The solution didn't work at first till I discovered I had left out the space between add and - in the last line.

sudo apt-get update worked without any error message and after all that there was no update!

Wonder why it happened in the first place?

**hesjnet** · January 30th, 2009

It worked perfectly! thanks

**greyfox1** · January 30th, 2009

Originally Posted by rebegin

hehe, that's just funny that i was looking for the "thanks" button for like 10 minutes but no luck. now i know at least that it's simply not around here nowadays

I think that the thanks button, along with the option to mark threads "solved" is temporarily not available for some reason. It has happened before, although I'm not exactly sure why. I believe both will be back at some point.

**Zeedok** · January 30th, 2009

Someone has written a script which sorts this out for me. You can find it here.

**Richie_** · January 31st, 2009

I get this message too, and while the solution posted seems to work I'm reluctant to try it.

The whole meaning of gpg keys is to make sure you access the server you think you use. If the key has changed the server you access could be a malicious one.

That said, call me paranoid, but I would really like to know why the key isn't known by my install before I add that key to my system!