I have tried installing R (for the first time on Ubuntu) using this blog post.

First three steps ran fine:

sudo echo "deb " | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9
gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

I got an 'OK'

Problem occurs in 4th step:

$ sudo apt-get update
E: Malformed entry 54 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list (Suite)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

I looked up the file, which said, at line 54:

deb xenial

The file was unable to be modified.

At first, I thought it was because I couldn't have access to public key so I tried the steps suggested by the first answer: How do I import a public key?However

I also tested to see if it was a firewall issue by switching from my company connection to my phone hotspot and repeating the installation process, same errors occurred, so I don't think its due to having blocked port 11371.

Any ideas how I can fix the issue? I'm not sure how to correct line 54 (in terms of what to write and also how to get past the text edit restrictions).

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1 Answer

Thanks @Pilot6 and @OrganicMarble for the suggestion. just for if anyone else is experiencing the issue: I ended up using

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

which helped me override permissions restriction and modify the file.

Just changed line 54 to

deb xenial[type]

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