Why cannot add PPA deadsnakes?

Question

I have ubuntu version 20.04 and I would like to install python 3.6 from the shell. After sudo apt install software-properties-common I am trying to use the add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa command but I am getting this error:

Cannot add PPA: 'ppa:~deadsnakes/ubuntu/ppa'.
ERROR: '~deadsnakes' user or team does not exist

Did I forget any steps or does the repository no longer work?

Answer 1

You're probably behind a coporate proxy and to add -E to your sudo command to preserve the environment variables.

$ sudo add-apt-repository -y 'ppa:deadsnakes/ppa'
Cannot add PPA: 'ppa:~deadsnakes/ubuntu/ppa'.
ERROR: '~deadsnakes' user or team does not exist.
$ sudo -E add-apt-repository -y 'ppa:deadsnakes/ppa'
 This PPA contains more recent Python versions packaged for Ubuntu.

Disclaimer: there's no guarantee of timely updates in case of security problems or other issues. If you want to use them in a security-or-otherwise-critical environment (say, on a production server), you do so at your own risk.

Update Note
===========
...

Answer 2

I got this error with a fresh Ubuntu installation in a VM and none of the other answers worked for me. However, this command solved the problem for me:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ca-certificates

(Credits: this was answered here at a related question.)

Answer 3

Just type this before running ppa command:

sudo apt install software-properties-common -y