[R-sig-Debian] Help for sources.list

[(Ted Harding)]

I'm following up on my reply to Doug's suggestion.
As noted there, my final attempt failed with reason given:

  W: GPG error: http://cran.us.r-project.org lenny-cran/ Release:
  The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public
  key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 06F90DE5381BA480

Beginning to feel that solving the signature problem might be the
key to making some progress, I visited thbe Linux/Debian section
of CRAN, and there found the information under "SECURE APT".

However, when I tried the first suggestion
  gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key 381BA480
I got the result:
  gpg: requesting key 381BA480 from hkp server subkeys.pgp.net
  gpg: keyserver timed out
  gpg: keyserver receive failed: keyserver error
with the same result if I changed it to "--recv-key 0x381BA480"

I then tried the second suggestion:
  "you can search for the key at http://keyserver.noreply.org/
   and copy it into a plain text file, named, for instance,
   jranke_cran.asc"

Entering "0x381BA480" (NB the prefix "0x" which has to be added
to the key "381BA480" as given in CRAN) as the search string,
and clicking on "Submit Query" initially gave
  "pub  1024D/381BA480 2007-02-15 Johannes Ranke (CRAN Debian archive)
   <jranke at uni-bremen.de>
   Fingerprint=6212 B7B7 931C 4BB1 6280  BA13 06F9 0DE5 381B A480"

Clicking on the highlighted "381BA480" in the above then returned

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: SKS 1.1.0

mQGiBEXUFiURBADkTqPqcRYdLIguhC6fnwTvIxdkoN1UEBuPR6NYW4iJzvRSas/g5bPo5ZxE
2i5BXiuVfYrSk/YiU+/lc0K6VYNDygbOfpBgGGhtfzYfFRTYNq8QsdD8L8BMYtOu5rYo5BYt
[...]
AwIDFQIDAxYCAQIeAQIXgAAKCRAG+Q3lOBukgM09AKCuapN6slttAFRjs2/mgtaMMwO9sgCf
ZD2au39Oo8QLXZhZTipN8c7j9mM=
=BRgm
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

which I duly copied into "ranke_cran.asc" (all of it, including the
header abd trailer). Then the recommended command
  apt-key add jranke_cran.asc
gave the result "OK"!

Then, restarting Synaptic Package Manager and searching for "r-cran"
finally showed the latest R packages (2-11-1) and I seem to have
proceeded to an upgrade. Now to see what happens -- time will tell!

In conclusion, I think there is scope for a more explicitly listed
sequence of actions for people unaccustomed to these processes.
I have described what I did in detail above for the benefit of any
other who may hit similar problems, and also as an example of the
sort of listing I am thinking of. If I knew more about it all myself,
I would suggest a possible general re-writing!

Best wishes to all,
Ted.


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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 05-Jun-10                                       Time: 22:01:33
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