Linux installation instructions need updating
Posted: 2020-10-19, 06:18
I'm posting a thread here in the hopes that the maintainer for the Linux PPA might see it.
I performed a fresh install of Linux Mint 20 on my laptop (rather than upgrade from Linux Mint 19, since I was also looking to change the filesystem type at the same time), and as part of setting up my environment again, I followed the Pale Moon installation instructions available here.
Technically speaking, those instructions did work, in the sense that they allow for Pale Moon to be installed through apt. Unfortunately, the method of adding a key for the Pale Moon repo triggers a bug that causes traditional apt utilities to fail with errors until the offending /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home:stevenpusser.gpg file is deleted (for instance, running "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lutris-team/lutris" afterwards will fail with a message that includes "gpg: invalid key resource URL '/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home:stevenpusser.gpg'", and the signing key for Lutris's PPA will not be saved). Of course, removing this file also removes the signing key for the Pale Moon repo, which causes "apt update" to complain about the lack of such a key.
This bug can be avoided by having the signing key written to the /tmp directory before using apt-key add (as I did) or by piping into apt-key add instead of tee (which would likely be a cleaner/more elegant solution). In either case, updating the installation instructions accordingly would help to keep other users from tripping over the same hurdle.
I performed a fresh install of Linux Mint 20 on my laptop (rather than upgrade from Linux Mint 19, since I was also looking to change the filesystem type at the same time), and as part of setting up my environment again, I followed the Pale Moon installation instructions available here.
Technically speaking, those instructions did work, in the sense that they allow for Pale Moon to be installed through apt. Unfortunately, the method of adding a key for the Pale Moon repo triggers a bug that causes traditional apt utilities to fail with errors until the offending /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home:stevenpusser.gpg file is deleted (for instance, running "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lutris-team/lutris" afterwards will fail with a message that includes "gpg: invalid key resource URL '/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home:stevenpusser.gpg'", and the signing key for Lutris's PPA will not be saved). Of course, removing this file also removes the signing key for the Pale Moon repo, which causes "apt update" to complain about the lack of such a key.
This bug can be avoided by having the signing key written to the /tmp directory before using apt-key add (as I did) or by piping into apt-key add instead of tee (which would likely be a cleaner/more elegant solution). In either case, updating the installation instructions accordingly would help to keep other users from tripping over the same hurdle.