Comment 1 for bug 1687122

This is a crash that recently started appearing in the Error Tracker the Traceback contains the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/add-apt-repository", line 168, in <module>
    if not sp.add_source_from_shortcut(shortcut, options.enable_source):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py", line 777, in add_source_from_shortcut
    raise shortcuts.ShortcutException(msg)
softwareproperties.shortcuts.ShortcutException: Failed to add key.

Looking at the code added in the SRU to xenial (https://launchpadlibrarian.net/309920080/software-properties_0.96.24.7_0.96.24.7.1.diff.gz) we can see the following:

@@ -753,6 +769,13 @@
     if worker:
         # wait for GPG key to be downloaded
         worker.join(30)
+ if worker.isAlive():
+ # thread timed out.
+ raise shortcuts.ShortcutException("Error: retrieving gpg key timed out.")
+ result, msg = self.myqueue.get()
+ if not result:
+ raise shortcuts.ShortcutException(msg)
+
     if self.options and self.options.update:
         import apt
         cache = apt.Cache()

It looks to me like this ShortcutException is raised when for whatever reason the client application fails to retrieve the key. I don't think there is anything we can do about this and as such don't think it should be reported to the Error Tracker at all.

The apport package hook for software-properties could filter out Tracebacks with this error.