How to change the default keyserver used by add-apt-repository

Posted on One min read

If you’ve encountered problems with connecting to keyserver.ubuntu.com like:

.... 
Executing: 
gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /tmp/tmp.UsuIhHAgLO --trustdb-name /etc/apt//trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys CFCA9579 
gpg: requesting key CFCA9579 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com 
gpg: keyserver timed out 
gpg: keyserver receive failed: keyserver error

Which might show up after you’ve added a new ppa to your list of repositories using add-apt-repository
i.e.: “sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jon-severinsson/ffmpeg”

Then what you have to do is to change the default port used for obtaining pgp keys from 11371 to 80.
To do this, edit /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSources/mintSources.py and replace all the occurrences of “keyserver.ubuntu.com” with hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80

after that,
…
simply enjoy the rest of your life!

Tested on linux mint 15.