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I'm attempting to install the latest version of R (currently on v 3.0.2) on Ubuntu Server 14.04, and as suggested by this post I've edited the /etc/apt/sources.list to include the following line:

 deb http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty universe

When I try to update the list of packages though, I get the following error

Err http://cran.rstudio.com trusty/universe amd64 Packages
  404  Not Found
Err http://cran.rstudio.com trusty/universe i386 Packages
  404  Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu/dists/trusty/universe/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu/dists/trusty/universe/binary-i386/Packages  404  Not Found

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

If I add a trailing forward slash to trusty, or remove universe in keeping with this format as shown below:

deb http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty/

I get

E: Malformed line 49 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (absolute dist)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

I thought maybe when apt-get upgrade accesses the sources.list it may be misformatting the url for the CRAN repository, because including /dists/trusty/universe/ doesn't seem right to me, but I don't know if that is the actual issue, or what to do about it.

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joeqesi
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  • I don't understand. Where did you get the `http://mirrors.ebi.ac.uk/CRAN/` from? What makes you think that's an Ubuntu repository (doesn't look like one). That's not what my answer to the question you linked to was suggesting. – terdon Mar 24 '17 at 10:58
  • @terdon `http://mirrors.ebi.ac.uk/CRAN/` is one of the mirrors for CRAN in the UK. I also tried `http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu` and that didn't work either. – joeqesi Mar 24 '17 at 11:20
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    It should be `deb http://mirrors.ebi.ac.uk/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty/` I think. The trailing slash is important - see [List of sources can not be read Ubuntu 16.04](http://askubuntu.com/a/894427/178692) – steeldriver Mar 24 '17 at 11:25
  • @joeqesi yes, I know it's a CRAN mirror. You're treating it as an Ubuntu repository though, not a CRAN mirror! If it fails when using `http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu`, that's a very different situation, but that it fails with `mirrors.ebi.ac.uk` is normal since that's not a repository. – terdon Mar 24 '17 at 11:38
  • @terdon my mistake. However, I've just tried updating again with `http://mirrors.ebi.ac.uk/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu` which did not work, and then tried updating with `http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu` which didn't work. – joeqesi Mar 24 '17 at 11:43
  • @steeldriver whenever I add the trailing slash to `trusty` I can't run `apt-get upgrade` as it considers the line to be malformed. – joeqesi Mar 24 '17 at 11:44
  • OK, then please [edit] your question to reflect that. You may as well remove the `mirrors.ebi.ac.uk` stuff since it makes sense that that would fail. Just edit it and show us the line you added for the `cran.rstudio.com` and the error you got when trying to use it. – terdon Mar 24 '17 at 11:44
  • @terdon the http://mirrors.ebi.ac.uk/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu mirror appears to work - at least for `xenial/` (don't have a trusty box I can test it on) – steeldriver Mar 24 '17 at 11:57
  • @steeldriver ah, yes, I hadn't checked the `/bin` subdir, I just saw that ` mirrors.ebi.ac.uk/CRAN/` was a regular mirror site and not a repo. – terdon Mar 24 '17 at 11:58

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