sometimes when we excute "apt-get update", we get this error "W: GPG error: http://extras.ubuntu.com precise Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" . This is caused by a missing key. We can just simply excute the following to solve the problem. apt-get update 2> /tmp/keymissing; for key in $(grep "NO_PUBKEY" /tmp/keymissing |sed "s/.*NO_PUBKEY //"); do echo -e "\nProcessing key: $key"; gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv $key && sudo gpg --export --armor $key | apt-key add -; done  

If you encounter the following error when updating, I listed below the steps to fix it. "W: GPG error: http://security.debian.org squeeze/updates Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY AED4B06F473041FA"