Northwest SysAdmin

For those of you that have Ubuntu systems, the apt-get system will be invaluable to get updates for security and general packages. There are a few things to keep up with on the apt-get packages.

The apt-get program on your system is downloading updated information from mirrors around the world, and those updates need to be verified at some point – enter the security keys… These security keys, without going into the entire cryptographic detail, have a public and a private portion. The public portion is distributed to the public in order to verify that the updates you’re getting are indeed from an official Ubuntu source (or Debian, Slackware, etc). These keys have expiration dates and if you just hit one – no worries, here’s the fix:

gpg –keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net –recv-keys 40976EAF437D05B5

gpg –export –armor 437D05B5 | sudo apt-key add -

That’s the quick fix – we’d love to explain the details behind the whole apt-get system – just let us know at our homepage: Northwest Sysadmin