1

This has been puzzling me for months and is an academic question now. I have a working fix, but want to understand the 'why'. Why is it that some sources in sources.list will sometimes fail to update in the following manner when the system clock is wrong:

E: Release file for http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic-updates/InRelease is not valid yet (invalid for another 9h 14min 16s). Updates for this repository will not be applied.

and sometimes that same source will update fine. I know the fix, but the apparent stochasticity of it is baffling. Is the Release file updated frequently, and something something timestamp, that's checked because...?

More detail about the issue and solutions but without detailed explanations as to what is happening:

Alexis Wilke
  • 2,707
GGibson
  • 121

1 Answers1

2

If you look at the file located at http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic-updates/InRelease you will see it is a PGP signed message. If you check the signature it is dated 15 May 2021 4:10:29 UTC.

Part of signature verification includes checking that the signature is currently valid, ie that the current time as indicated by the computer clock is not before the signature was created nor after it expires.

fuzzydrawrings
  • 786