Comments on: How to solve “The following packages cannot be authenticated”

By: vileda

vileda — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:35:27 +0000

thanks!

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:52:59 +0000

I had to update the keyring and tell it to install the unverified keyring package. Then everything worked. I could not find a solution that didn’t require the installation of at least one unverified package.

By: Steffen

Steffen — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:24:15 +0000

Thx!

By: Ming

Ming — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 02:47:55 +0000

Thx, bro!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 05:44:00 +0000

thanks. this worked perfectly! :)

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:45:11 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you! :)

By: {void}

{void} — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:23:07 +0000

If you’ve disabled authentication in apt[itude] settings, you’ll likewise get this error even if authentication is otherwise possible/working (makes a certain degree of sense; a kind of reminder that authentication isn’t “functional”, but it would be better if it simply said “WARNING: authentication disabled”).

Regardless, to “fix” this, you need to search for auth and trust in /etc/apt. You can fetch a list of files with auth or trust keywords in them using the command:
grep -iE ‘auth|trust’ -rl /etc/apt/

Check the files for proper settings.

I install all my computers using FAI, and FAI sets this by default (unless you tweak it so it doesn’t). Presumably, this is to prevent install problems with badly implemented local debian repositories. Our repositories are properly implemented (even our custom repository), so we keep auth enabled.

I don’t know if this is the case with Debian, or just Ubuntu, but the fix is the same in any case.

By: Slava

Slava — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:21:22 +0000

for me worked only

*apt-key update*

By: al37919

al37919 — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:04:45 +0000

one more possibility: check that the system time is correct

By: Donnie

Donnie — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:42:46 +0000

Thanks for the tip, dude. Worked for me.

By: M Hasan

M Hasan — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 06:10:13 +0000

The following link solved my problem.u can try if keyring install dont work.
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/174

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:34:56 +0000

Look at the alien package.

By: Economic and Culture Observer (Lenno Cornish)

Economic and Culture Observer (Lenno Cornish) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:11:48 +0000

Does anyone here know how to translate rpm packages to deb ones?

By: Yaroslav Halchenko

Yaroslav Halchenko — Tue, 15 May 2007 23:18:56 +0000

If by mistake you typed
etch updates/main updates/contrib updates/non-free
instead of
etch/updates main contrib non-free
you will get ‘The following packages cannot be authenticated!’ because apt will failed to fetch Release.gpg

By: Progfou

Progfou — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:45:25 +0000

You have to “apt-get update” before “apt-get upgrade” !

When “apt-get instal …” tells you have the last version installed, it’s from its own knowledge of what the last version is. And this “knowledge” has to be updated using “apt-get update”.

By: Ian Campbell

Ian Campbell — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 02:44:31 +0000

I have now tried all the above and had no luck. I have a fresh install of Etch using the latest weekly release. apt-get update shows:
GPG error: http://security.debian.org etch/updates Release: The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG A70DAF536070D3A1 Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (4.0/etch)
I tried apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
That said I had the latest version.
apt-key update told me it had processed 5 and 5 were unchanged.
In desperation I added

APT::Get::AllowUnauthenticated 1 ;
to my /etc/apt/apt.conf but it still has the gpg error when I run apt-get update.

Any further ideas would be gratefully received. I am totally out of them.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 22:23:44 +0000

But it’s fundamentally broken – you have to upgrade the keys before upgrading from the archive, and the keys are frequently out of date.. eg. from today:

# apt-get install debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
debian-keyring is already the newest version.
debian-archive-keyring is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 146 not upgraded.

# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
adduser apt apt-utils base-files bash bsdmainutils bsdutils busybox
console-common console-data coreutils cron dash debconf debconf-i18n
…
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
base-files debianutils bash bsdutils libc6 libc6-xen tzdata libsepol1
libselinux1 coreutils dpkg e2fslibs e2fsprogs gzip hostname libdb4.3
libpam-runtime libpam0g libpam-modules login mount ncurses-bin perl-modules

The keys are out of date for about 80% of the downloaded packages, including important ones like libc6 – basically all that implied security does nothing because you *must* allow unsigned installs to be able to upgrade.

By: Daniel Kahn Gillmor

Daniel Kahn Gillmor — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:31:50 +0000

Please don’t allow unauthenticated packages. that defeats the purpose of signed apt repositories entirely.

This is a feature a long time in coming, and it’s a good one in today’s untrustworthy network. disabling it is a bad idea.

By: Dusty Wilson

Dusty Wilson — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:50:26 +0000

If this doesn’t work for you, try this command instead:

apt-key update

By: Bhasker C V

Bhasker C V — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 08:19:51 +0000

open /etc/apt/apt.conf and add this line
APT::Get::AllowUnauthenticated 1 ;

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:38:41 +0000

Thank You!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:59:42 +0000

Thank you!!! It took several wrong google hits before I found your page. In most of the pages I saw the person was just ignoring it and saying Yes anyway! I am very glad you posted an easy fix! Works great!! Thanks again!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:16:29 +0000

Perhaps because the error message is “cannot be authenticated”, not “could not be authenticated”?

By: Dustin

Dustin — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 23:43:33 +0000

Awesome, a fix :) Seems this page is turning up at around secondish on google as well, bravo.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:30:39 +0000

Yes, thanks!
I just needed to run apt-get update, and then it worked.

By: Hideo "Frank" Akino

Hideo "Frank" Akino — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 14:53:38 +0000

Thanks! It worked for me.

By: Brian Detweiler

Brian Detweiler — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 18:40:07 +0000

First hit on Google turns up this simple solution. Thanks dude!

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 04:17:05 +0000

My search term was:

apt-get “packages could not be authenticated”

(With that message in quotes, just like I’ve typed it)

Indeed, the Wiki page doesn’t contain the relevant error message.

However, that looks like a very informative page. I’m glad you sent the link — hopefully if anyone finds this page with Google, they can follow it to the wiki. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to add the warning message to the wiki page.

By: Ari Pollak

Ari Pollak — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 01:28:50 +0000

Are you sure? The third Google hit for “apt the following packages could not be authenticated” turned up this as the third hit: http://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt