On antiX 13.2 Testing 32-bit, I've noticed that when I reload my package lists in Synaptic, the process was hanging for a while with the progress bar at around 97% (by eye), then giving a message that one of the repos (duinsoft.nl, source of the update-sun-jre package that keeps Java up to date) couldn't be authenticated. I used to get that message in MEPIS 11, until I installed a package from the MEPIS Community Repo call check-apt-gpg -- which scans active repos for GPG keys and, if it finds some without, asks for root privilege and tries to download and install the keys for those packages.

It occurred to me this morning that installing this package would probably significantly speed up the repo reload process, since Synaptic wouldn't have to wait and wait for a key authentication that was doomed to fail, so I searched the repos for this package -- then checked my MEPIS system, to find that the package is apparently one created for MEPIS by one of their package managers. Well, both MEPIS and antiX are Debian based and use .deb packages; I figured it was a good chance the package would install successfully, so I located the Synaptic cache on my MEPIS system -- and the .deb file wasn't there; apparently, checkaptgpg was part of the original MEPIS install. I found it in Synaptic on that machine, checked to reinstall, and a minute later the package was in the cache; I copied it to a USB key and brought it over to my antiX desktop system, where gdebi from a command line (as su) promptly installed it, and a run from command line predictably downloaded and installed the GPG key for duinsoft.nl -- and a Synaptic test confirmed that the hang near the end of repo updates was reduced to almost nothing, as well as the message about inability to authenticate that repo being removed. Same install on my laptop, naturally, took longer, but saved even more time in the repo update process (which was painfully slow before on that 300 MHz processor).

For those who don't have a MEPIS system, this package is available for direct download from the MEPIS Communitry Repository:


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/repo/pool/main/c/checkaptgpg/checkaptgpg_0.2mcr110+1_all.deb"
linktext was:"32-bit checkaptgpg"
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========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/repo/pool/main/c/checkaptgpg/checkaptgpg_0.2mcr110+1_all.deb"
linktext was:"64-bit checkaptgpg"
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Worth having; there's a manual command line process to do this job, but it's much more convenient to automate the process (which will need to be repeated every time you add a repo that isn't part of the standard antiX set for your stable, Testing, or Sid install and isn't already in the antiX keyring).