sudo apt-get install gitolite failed: "No adminkey given"

[Ben McCann]

I received the error below when running on Ubuntu 10.10:

No adminkey given - not initializing gitolite in /var/lib/gitolite

What does this error refer to and is there a way to fix it?

Thanks,

Ben

$ sudo apt-get install gitolite

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

Suggested packages:

  gitweb

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  gitolite

0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 0B/112kB of archives.

After this operation, 344kB of additional disk space will be used.

Preconfiguring packages ...

Selecting previously deselected package gitolite.

(Reading database ... 187744 files and directories currently installed.)

Unpacking gitolite (from .../gitolite_1.5.4-1_all.deb) ...

Setting up gitolite (1.5.4-1) ...

No adminkey given - not initializing gitolite in /var/lib/gitolite.

[Ben McCann]

I found it was much better not to try to use the packaged version, which seems to be broken, and instead to grab the source from git.  Also, I found it easiest to follow this tutorial instead of the docs on the gitolite site:

http://www.philwhln.com/install-gitolite-to-manage-your-git-repositories