Add public key behind a firewall in Ubuntu Shell

In short: Use
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80/ --recv-key E084DAB9
instead of
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9
This way you force port 80 which is usually clear.

I got the idea from the answer of Phil Bradley on the superuser.com forum. He claimed that this would be fixed in Natty, but it isn’t although the configuration file he mentions has the port80 specification added by default, apt-key does not use it. The above snippet solves that.

For those Ubuntu users who have no idea what I am talking about:

Installing the newest R-version in Ubuntu requires to append the CRAN repository to you /etc/apt/sources.list. One might hit Alt+F2 and enter
gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

With Xubuntu you would use mousepad instead of gedit. In any distro you can use
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
in a terminal.

Usually I add the line
deb http://cran.uib.no/bin/linux/ubuntu natty/
at the end of the file and update with
sudo apt-get update.

CRAN at University of Bergen is closest to me. You might want another one (check the r-project.org site for mirrors).

apt-get update answers with a warning
GPG error: http://cran.uib.no nat/ Release: The folowing signatures coldn't be verified because the public key is not abailable

That is not a problem. One can install R and packages anyway, but it is better to have the public key.

Behind a firewall (and many public and open hotspots block several ports) it is not possible to use

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9

since the port through which the keyserver is contacted is blocked on most firewalls. You have to force port 80 by:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80/ --recv-key E084DAB9

After the key is added
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install R-recommended emacs ess
proceeds without warning nor error.

Advertisement