Launchpad Help > Packaging > Upload errors

Package upload errors

Once you've made an upload either to your PPA or the official Ubuntu archive, Launchpad will send you a success or failure notice by email. You can check the status of your build by visiting on your PPA's build status page or the Ubuntu build queue, if you're producing official Ubuntu packages.

Common errors

clearsign failed: secret key not available

If you get an error when signing the changes file (clearsign failed: secret key not available), pass an additional option -k[key_id] to debuild. You can use gpg --list-keys to get the key ID. Look for line similar to "pub 12345/12ABCDEF"; the key is the alphanumeric section after the forward slash.

Apparently successful upload followed by a rejection email

If you're uploading to a PPA, your upload may appear to succeed, followed by an email with the following:

• Rejected:
  Signer has no upload rights at all to this distribution.
  Not permitted to upload to the RELEASE pocket in a series in the 'CURRENT' state.

This means that you forgot to specify your PPA's name on the command-line (that is, the "my-ppa" part) and dput sent your upload to the primary Ubuntu archive, for which you don't have authorisation. You can disable that behaviour by adding these lines to your ~/.dput.cf:

[DEFAULT]
default_host_main = notspecified

[notspecified]
fqdn = SPECIFY.A.PPA.NAME
incoming = .

Now, if you omit the PPA name you'll immediately get an error.

Other errors

If you come across other errors when uploading a package to Launchpad, find us in #launchpad on Freenode or get in touch by email.