Error installing sbt on Ubuntu 18.04: `gpg: keyserver receive failed: Invalid argument`

I'm following the official sbt install instructions.

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823
Executing: /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.uRI0yiusG0/gpg.1.sh --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823
gpg: keyserver receive failed: Invalid argument


Edit:

I've tried digging into the gpg.1.sh script that it executes. Here is the final call to gpg.

$ sudo cat /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.IRnmlx6hfX/gpg.0.sh
#!/bin/sh
exec 'gpg' --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring
--homedir '/tmp/apt-key-gpghome.IRnmlx6hfX' --no-auto-check-trustdb --trust-model always "$@"


Edit 2:

I've tried to directly query for the key from the keyserver with no luck. See http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?search=2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823&op=vindex . Is it possible the key is missing?

2 Answers
2

In official SBT documentation there is this note:

Note: There’s been reports about SSL error using Ubuntu: Server access Error: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unexpected error: java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException: the trustAnchors parameter must be non-empty url=https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/scala-sbt/sbt/1.1.0/sbt-1.1.0.pom, which apparently stems from OpenJDK 9 using PKCS12 format for /etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts cert-bug. According to https://stackoverflow.com/a/50103533/3827 it is fixed in Ubuntu Cosmic (18.10), but Ubuntu Bionic LTS (18.04) is still waiting for a release. See the answer for a woraround.

According to this the problem has been fixed in Ubuntu 18.04.1.

Had same problem. Two ubuntu 18.04.1 boxes. One recently installed, the other was recently upgraded from 16.04.5. In the first one I could import keys to install Scala & R without problems. In the second one the import process failed with the same error as you.

It seems that gpg imports keys launching a dirmng daemon. This process is the one that communicates through the network with keyserver.ubuntu.com.

To solve the problem, I launched dirmng prior to gpg this way:

sudo -i
dirmngr --daemon --homedir /root/key --debug-level guru --log-file dirmng.log
gpg -vv --debug-level 9 --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --homedir '/root/key' --no-auto-check-trustdb --trust-model always --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823


Then gpg shows the dialog with dirmngr:

gpg: DBG: chan_3 -> KEYSERVER --clear hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80
gpg: DBG: chan_3 <- OK
gpg: DBG: chan_3 -> KS_GET -- 0x2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823
gpg: DBG: chan_3 <- ERR 167804976 Invalid argument <Dirmngr>
gpg: keyserver receive failed: Invalid argument
gpg: DBG: chan_3 -> BYE


And dirmngr log file shows errors resolving keyserver.ubuntu.com:

2018-09-07 11:44:34 dirmngr[16174.6] DBG: chan_6 <- KS_GET -- 0x2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823
2018-09-07 11:44:39 dirmngr[16174.6] resolving 'keyserver.ubuntu.com' failed: Invalid argument
2018-09-07 11:44:39 dirmngr[16174.6] number of system provided CAs: 133
2018-09-07 11:44:44 dirmngr[16174.6] resolving 'keyserver.ubuntu.com' failed: Invalid argument
2018-09-07 11:44:44 dirmngr[16174.6] can't connect to 'keyserver.ubuntu.com': host not found
2018-09-07 11:44:44 dirmngr[16174.6] error connecting to 'http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80': Invalid argument
2018-09-07 11:44:44 dirmngr[16174.6] command 'KS_GET' failed: Invalid argument


Why one box connected to the same network fails to resolve keyserver.ubuntu.com from dirmngr and the newer one succeeds? Why in the older box I could resolve keyserver.ubuntu.com with nslookup but dirmngr couldn't? I don't know. But the difference between the two boxes was in /etc/resolv.conf. I had added google DNS servers. Removing them from resolv.conf made dirmngr work.

nameserver 127.0.0.53
#nameserver 8.8.8.8
#nameserver 8.8.4.4


After this change, apt-key works. Hope this helps.

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