unattended-upgrades always gives apt-key net-update error

Question

I am running an Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS Server and I have setup unattended-upgrades to be verbose.

Now I always see an error from "apt-key net-update".

Issuing the command manually gives no message at all but the return code is 1.

Issuing "apt-key update" gives a return code of 0.

What is wrong here?

Is there a bug or can I fix this problem?

user228505 · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-01 07:09:11Z

I have the same issue on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server.

I did some research and believe it is caused by apt-key net-update having no URL to update from.

See the Ubuntu tracker for details. The change comment

cmdline/apt-key: exit immediately out of net_update().

gives a clear hint it was done intentional.

Digging further into the change log gives the relevant patch lines:

 net_update() {
+    # Disabled for now as code is insecure
+    exit 1

So it might have been a better way to return success. Feel free to report a bug against Ubuntu.

Bottom line is that it's no problem an can be ignored.

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