apt-key command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix apt-key command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

apt-key: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: apt-key: command not found

Solutions to apt-key: command not found

How To Fix apt-key: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu apt-key is provided by apt package.

apt is:

This package provides commandline tools for searching and managing as well as querying information about packages as a low-level access to all features of the libapt-pkg library.

These include:

  • apt-get for retrieval of packages and information about them from authenticated sources and for installation, upgrade and removal of packages together with their dependencies
  • apt-cache for querying available information about installed as well as installable packages
  • apt-cdrom to use removable media as a source for packages
  • apt-config as an interface to the configuration settings
  • apt-key as an interface to manage authentication keys

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install apt

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install apt.

sudo apt -y install apt

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install apt

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix apt-key command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.