That’s one great BOFH!
Right. So, what is happening here is that a certain class of apt errors will allow your apt update
to update the index files for all repositories with the exception of those that gave that type of error.
Let me give an example since I realize the above sentence may be confusing. For instance, the GPG error is one such error. When the apt update
routine reaches a repository that has an invalid signature or no signature key, that repository will generate a GPG error for that repository. You will see this being shown on the terminal if you are performing the update command there. When the apt update
finishes, it will still update the indexes of all other repositories. But for the repository that generated the GPG error, it will use the previous index; i.e., it didn’t update that repository, but updated all others.
On the terminal, all you see is the error message I described above and nothing more. So this is for most purposes not a problem. It is just telling you that repository hasn’t been updated. Everything else has been updated and if there were new versions of installed packages, they will be marked for update.
But the GUI throws you that weird message. In order to see what repositories apt is having problems with, just run sudo apt-get update
from the command line. Once you determine the repository (or repositories) giving the error, you have three options:
- Ignore the error. Usually it’s a connection error caused upstream and that will get fixed sometime later. Like I said, everything else updated just fine. So it’s generally safe to ignore it.
- Fix the error. Usually, if it is a GPG error, you can fix it by trying to generate a new key according to the repository owner instructions, usually at their website.
- Disable the repository. If you install Synaptic, you can disable the repository easily. You can also do it on the command line by editing the appropriate files, but I’ll leave those instruction for later if you ask for them. By disabling it, you get some respite from the error, because that repo is no longer checked, and decide when you want to fix it at your own convenience.