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

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 5 June 2010 at 22:01, (Ted Harding) wrote:
| 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:

It is just a warning from apt (note the 'W').

If you trust the integrety of CRAN mirrors, just proceed without adding a
key. I have done so for years myself.

|   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

You timed out with subkeys.pgp.net. So you could try a different keyserver,
e.g. the very old-school one at MIT:

edd at ron:~> gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-key 381BA480
gpg: requesting key 381BA480 from hkp server pgp.mit.edu
gpg: key 381BA480: "Johannes Ranke (CRAN Debian archive) <jranke at uni-bremen.de>" 1 new signature
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:         new signatures: 1
edd at ron:~> 

| 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"!

Good.

| 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!

I am sure Johannes would welcome patches from both you and Michael (who seem
to be leading the charge that the text is unclear and/or misleading).

I think the page is good. One could add more detail, but more verbose also
means that it takes longer to cut to the chase.

So here is a suggestion: Why don't you and/or Michael start a page each (or
one jointly) on the R Wiki with a tutorial both of you find suitable. Others
can then edit as well, and Johannes can add a prominent link.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,  NotDuncan


-- 
  Regards, Dirk