Ubuntu
apt package

Apt supports only up to 40 GPG keys and provides unhelpful error messages when there are more than 40

Bug #1550789 reported by Tal Liron on 2016-02-27

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #1263540: Apt-get reports NO_PUBKEY gpg error for keys that are present in trusted.gpg.. Edit Remove

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	apt (Ubuntu)	New	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

First of all, the 40 key limit is unrealistic for heavy Ubuntu users. None of my 40+ keys is meaningless. I use many repositories, including PPAs, for various reasons.

But, when you do hit the limit, you get very unhelpful error messages, such as this:

W: GPG error: http://mirrors.gigenet.com trusty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 40976EAF437D05B5 NO_PUBKEY 3B4FE6ACC0B21F32

Nowhere are you told that you have too many keys, and nowhere do you get a suggestion no how to solve this error.

See, for example, this bug for the confusion that this causes:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1263540