Steam Signature Verification Error (Conflicting Packages?)

[deerdrop]

Hello all,

Every time I open Discover to update software, I get a pop-up with the following error message:

W: An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: https://repo.steampowered.com/steam stable InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY F24AEA9FB05498B7
E: https://repo.steampowered.com/steam stable InRelease is not (yet) available (The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY F24AEA9FB05498B7)

I suspect this may have to do with the journey I went on to get a working edition of steam. When I did a little bit of research, it seemed like the majority of people had the best experience when downloading a .deb from steam's website over installing from either flatpak or snap, so I did that. It worked for a little while, but eventually I ran into an issue where it wouldn't boot up at all, so I uninstalled it with apt (using both remove and then purge) and went into Discover to download the snap version. That one flat out didn't work for me so I immediately uninstalled it (still with Discover) and installed the flatpak version instead, which has now been working for me just fine.

Does the flatpak version simply not have a public key, or did some wires get crossed in all the version switching? If it's the former, can I set this to be ignored somewhere so this error doesn't pop up every time? If the latter, what can I do about it?

Thanks in advance.

[Snowhog]

Review this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1306...rror-no-pubkey

[deerdrop]

Hi, thank you for the link. I'd like to just check that I understand what's going on before I proceed with console commands.

So during installation, some sort of minor hiccup caused the key verification to fail. This did not cause the download or install to be interrupted, and also does not prevent me from using the program. What it does do is prevent apt from downloading any new data from that source, including the PGP key to verify.
The fix therefore is to manually download the key, copy it into a folder which specifically exists for storing manually downloaded keys (because that folder is currently empty, and in older versions of the OS apparently wouldn't even exist by default, I assume the other software keys are being stored elsewhere), then add a line to... some kind of file somewhere declaring that key to be the signature for that repository.

And finally to be absolutely sure, the commands I would run for my particular solution would be:
curl -fsSL https://repo.steampowered.com/steam.gpg |
sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/steam.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/steam.gpg] https://repo.steampowered.com/apt stable main" |
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/steam.list

(skipping mkdir because I have already found that directory to exist, skipping the chmod 644 commands because I do not have a umask override, and skipping the `sudo tee ... > /dev/null` command because user terdon seems to have just randomly added that line to the answer he's sourcing from user FWDekker with absolutely no explanation as to what it does or why it would be necessary.)

And also I should ignore the fact that https://repo.steampowered.com/steam tells you to put the gpg key in /usr/share/keyrings/steam.gpg

Do I sort of have it right?

[deerdrop]

After 5 days with no response I attempted to run the commands as I wrote them above. curl returned a 404 for the first one, so I went to https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/ in my browser and checked the link it provided to the gpg, which was https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/...able/steam.gpg
So I swapped that in for the first url and ran the commands. Now when I open discover I get the following error, which looks very similar but it'll be easier to tell after I paste it here:

W: An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: https://repo.steampowered.com/steam stable InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY F24AEA9FB05498B7
E: https://repo.steampowered.com/steam stable InRelease is not (yet) available (The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY F24AEA9FB05498B7)
E: The repository 'https://repo.steampowered.com/apt stable Release' does not have a Release file.
W: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
W: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

ok so the first two lines are identical but then there's three new lines. so it appears that the second url was also incorrect. I don't know what that url is supposed to point to, so I really don't know how to figure out what the correct url should be. also, now I need instructions on how to remove the incorrect line that I just inserted into /etc/apt/sources.list.d/steam.list without breaking anything else.

PLEASE HELP.

thanks

[Princey]

You can manually remove the steam line you wanted if you go type the following in the terminal

sudo software-properties-qt

and press "ENTER". Click on the "OTHER SOFTWARE" tab. Locate the entry with

https://repo.steampowered.com/steam

Left click and chose edit from below Click "ok" when done or you can just plain remove it. Frankly, I think the issue you experienced after downloading the deb file from Steam's website most likely has to do with the left overs from the snap/flatpak version you used. I've noticed anytime you switch from a few snap packages to the local ones, after an update, they return even if you had removed them. Had that issue with Firefox and Thunderbird until I completely removed snap from my system. I used the deb from Steam's website and I've never had any issue with it not working or launching. It once stuttered but I realized it was due to network issues. Every time the app launches, it runs a default update check. If there's no internet connectivity or some network glitch, the programme tends to hang a bit.

[deerdrop]

Hmm... this is all I have.


I don't think I installed either the flatpak or snap version of steam before downloading the deb from steam's website, but honestly I can't 100% remember. But I don't think that official version was just hanging in boot. I went into settings to enable Steam Play for all titles, which is apparently a setting that requires a restart, so I restarted it. Especially since it was restarting from a setting change I was very generous with its boot time, I think I probably left my computer up for 2 whole minutes before force quitting and trying again, and then another minute before rebooting the computer and trying again. It would not open. The only option was to uninstall and reinstall and I figured if I'm doing that I'd see if a different version worked better for me.

So do you think this no pubkey error comes from switching from snap to flatpak steam?

[deerdrop]

In case someone finds this post because they have a similar issue, I was able to get help from the Zorin forums:
https://forum.zorin.com/t/public-key...le-error/40875

[claydoh]

fwiw, the NO_PUBKEY error is not an unknown occurrence in Debian/Ubuntu.

Even here on KFN

it isn't specific to steam or anything, and can happen for a variety of reasons.