Bug#317101: apt: does not give meaningful error message if gpg is not found

[Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org>]

severity 317101 wishlist
retitle 317101 Record the reasons for authentication failures for later use?
thanks
 
On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 12:43:14PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> Package: apt
> Version: 0.5.28.6
> Severity: normal
> 
> Hi,
> 
> when installing packages without having gpg present on the system, apt
> complains that the packages being installed are untrusted. I
> wrongfully attributed that to the fact that some _packages_ are still
> unsigned, not being aware that apt's new feature only tests the
> Release file's signature.
> 
> This would have been much easier if apt would thruthfully say that the
> package were unverified since no gpg binary was found.
> 
> Please add a warning or re-word the "do you really want to install
> untrusted packages" message to indicate that gpg might be missing.

apt-get update does print a helpful message in this case which suggests
installing the gpg package.  If you ignore that and then run an install
operation, apt doesn't know the reason for the earlier failure.

-- 
 - mdz