Issue Resolved, for now

The past week I have been keeping a close monitor on the issue that I encountered in my Ubuntu 9.10 installation.  With research, I discovered that this Apt- Authentication issue has been bugging Ubuntu some 4 years back and many still encounter it (till now and including myself).

My friend back home, who, by the way has been very generous in lending a hand at solving my problems with Ubuntu (or whatever issue I throw at him), tried to send me some advise on what to do, to no avail.

This was what happened:

Apt Authentication issue

Problem during package list update. The package list update failed with a authentication failure. This usually happens behind a network proxy server. Please try to click on the "Run this action now" button to correct the problem or update the list manually by running Update Manager and clicking on "Check".

Upon trying to update:

W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used.GPG error: http://security.ubuntu.com karmic-security Release: The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG 40976EAF437D05B5 Ubuntu Archive Automatic Signing Key

W: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/karmic-security/Release 

W: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

I was really dumbfounded, newbie to Ubuntu as I am, even to Windows, I am just a typical user!

Smackcode sent an email for me to try the following:

In the terminal type the following:

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get update

Voila!  Problem resolved.

Next please!