leadiv

The problem

I recently added clamav to my Ubuntu system. The next time I received a notice from the software center to update my system there were some updates from clamav. When trying to update this error message was returned:

The action would require the installation of packages from not authenticated sources.

What this means is that Ubuntu was unable to find a public key to authenticate against the code being requested making it an untrustworthy source.

Is this solution for you?

To determine if this solution will work for you fire up a terminal (“Applications > Accessories > Terminal”) and run:

sudo apt-get update

Among the messages outputted on the terminal, you will be looking for a message at the end with similar wording:

W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net natty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 8AB767895ADC2037

Notice the hexadecimal number at the end (8AB767895ADC2037), this is the public key that is missing.

The fix

To fix this I ran the following command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8AB767895ADC2037

NOTICE: Your key(s) will most likely be different from mine. Use your key(s) not mine.

Other reading

As with most problems in life, this one can be solved through Googling. Here are the resources that I used:

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1221323
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/69285/software-center-errors-and-doesnt-update-any-more

There I was biting my nails like I do in the middle of an intense thriller movie. Looking intently at the screen hoping and praying everything turns out okay. Of course I was not watching the latest thriller, I was just trying to install Ubuntu 8.10 on an old IBM ThinkPad. The past day or so I have been trying to get the installation CD to work to no avail.

I have at least learned a few things in the process though. Like for one don’t ever fully wipe out the partition until you know for sure the installation will work. You never know when a CD/DVD drive is going to bit the dust. A better idea is to partition off a section and try installing Ubuntu along side Windows or whatever other OS you currently have before blowing the whole hard dive away just to find out that halfway through the install process you get an unresolvable error. Better to have one OS then none.

The second thing–which I think is the issue I ran into–is if you are installing it on an older computer you should really take into an account that it has older hardware and not the latest and greatest. When I went to burn the ISO to the CD I just used the default speed on my burner (maximum). This as it turns out did not really jive with the ThinkPad’s CD/DVD drive’s speed. So after many failed installations and thoughts of just chucking the laptop out my second floor apartment and telling my brother it was stolen by intergalactic computer hacking gnomes. I tried writing the CD at x20 instead of the maximum (whatever that might be on my CD/DVD burner). So far it seems to be working albeit slow and steady.