[Bug 736533] Re: gpg gives bogus, misleading error message

[Paul Abrahams]

I've encountered this bug again under Precise.  What confuses the issue
greatly is that it's environment-dependent in an unknown way.  In many
posts the recommended way to deal with a missing public key is this:

gpg --keyserver pgpkeys.mit.edu --recv-key  A8AA1FAA3F055C03

with the key shown here replaced by the troublesome one.  For many
people it works -- for me it does not.  Apparently it doesn't work if
you're calling gpg from behind a proxy server -- but I'm not.  There's
also an issue about gpg using the nonstandard port 11371 rather than
port 80, but when I opened the port explicitly the problem did not go
away.

I've seen this behavior on two different machines, although the HTTP
code has been different -- either 6 or 7.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/736533

Title:
  gpg gives bogus, misleading error message

Status in “gnupg” package in Ubuntu:
  Expired

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: apt

  When gpg is called as the result of a call on apt-key, it gives a
  misleading message if the key cannot be found by the keyserver.  The
  following transcript illustrates this:

  pwa at pwa-K60IJ:~$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com A8A515F046D7E7CF
  [sudo] password for pwa: 
  Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com A8A515F046D7E7CF
  gpg: requesting key 46D7E7CF from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
  ?: keyserver.ubuntu.com: Host not found
  gpgkeys: HTTP fetch error 7: couldn't connect: Success
  gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
  gpg: Total number processed: 0

  In fact the host keyserver.ubuntu.com is perfectly reachable, but it
  can't locate the requested key.  The error message should reflect that
  situation.

  I'm running Kubuntu 10.10.

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