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Showing posts with label debian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debian. Show all posts

Friday, May 23, 2008

Debian, APT and gpg keys

For quite some time now Debian's repositories have been relying on gpg keys to ensure the authenticity and integrity of their packages.

One thing no one had the decency of explaining is how to get a certain repository's key into one's "trusted ring" so apt won't complain when downloading packages from there.

Well, I'm going to go right to the point and tell exactly what to do.

  1. Add the repository's address to sources.list (if you have any doubts try man 5 sources.list)
  2. Reload the package lists (through "apt-get update" or Synaptic's "Reload"). It will complain about not having the key to the repository. In that complaint, it will show you the ID of the repository. Write down the last 8 digits of it.
  3. With this information in hands, you're able to download that repository's key using the following command (replace XXXXXXXX with the number you wrote down):
  4. gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys XXXXXXXX
  5. Now all you have to do is to import that key into apt's key database:
  6. gpg --armor --export XXXXXXXX | apt-key add -
  7. And you're done. Now run refresh the package lists again and apt won't bug you anymore.

Friday, September 21, 2007

A lot done.

Work. Work-work-work. A bit more of work.

That's what it took for me to get a decent desktop running. After a lot of things I had to go through, including a fresh install, a huge amount of bizarre errors, a reinstall, an upgrade to lenny, a driver compilation and lots and lots and lots of installed packages, I finally have a minimally decent desktop.

The best part is, it's Debian. This may seem a completely moot point, but I actually missed all the stuff I had to go through to get things begin to work the way I want them too.

It's not finished, yet. For example, I still wasn't able to make compiz work here. And I still haven't got my gnome configurations how they should be. But gnome settings are the last thing I'm worrying about right now; first I want everything just working. When I get that I'll worry about how I want everything to be.