Broken Again - Unable to install R 3.5.0 in Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04)

Question

This thread from @pineapple explains a previous issue where the user was unable to install R 3.5.0 in Ubuntu 18.04 using the following process:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/"
sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://cloud.r-project.org/ bionic-backports main restricted universe"
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E084DAB9
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base r-base-dev

Pineapple added an update to the question stating, "UPDATE : The bug has been fixed by Michael Rutter and his Debian team. A big thanks to everyone involved.".

When I try and install R 3.5.0 on my Bionic Beaver box I get this string of errors after issuing the sudo apt-get update command. Is the issue truly solved? How do I solve it?

Err:10 https://cloud.r-project.org bionic-backports Release
404  Not Found [IP: 52.84.35.214 443]
Reading package lists... Done    
E: The repository 'https://cloud.r-project.org bionic-backports Release' 
does not have a Release file. 
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. 
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

I think, you read or do something wrong. Please read install documentation from project web page, here: https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/ — mariaczi, Jun 22 '18 at 13:47
Possible duplicate of Unable to install R 3.5.0 in Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04) — N0rbert, Jun 22 '18 at 14:20
@N0rbert disagree because the issue addressed in that post is different. They also reference that question in their post already, and are looking for additional support because they followed an answer over there and are getting 404 errors now when apt-get update is run. — Thomas Ward, Jun 22 '18 at 14:35
Retracted close vote. Seems to be new issue. Thank you, @ThomasWard ! — N0rbert, Jun 22 '18 at 15:16

Thomas Ward · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-22T14:56:35.113

Either the instructions you followed are wrong, or you made a mistake, in either case you did something that you shouldn't have.

The second add-apt-repository command you entered is incorrect and wrong. bionic-backports is a software repository in the Ubuntu repositories, not the R Project cloud repository. This is the basis for that 404 error, so you will need to go into /etc/apt/sources.list and find where that line got added, and either remove that line or comment it out. (My suggestion is to just remove the line since it won't ever work)

Further, the bionic-backports repository should already be enabled by default (but set to a lower priority than the rest of the repositories). You shouldn't have to do the add-apt-repository command at all. If a backported version of software is needed, then the R installer(s) should be referring to a version of the software in the backports repo, and should automatically get installed.

Broken Again - Unable to install R 3.5.0 in Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04)

1 Answers1