I got this error while I was trying to add a PPA at school, on a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server. To fix this error, you have to install the software-properties-common: $ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common just need to insatll this command is ok. ######################################################################## This is all. Now your command for adding PPAs works like a charm. If you want to find out how I have fixed this error by myself , without external / Google help, read further. I have search with apt-file for the add-apt-repository and found out in which package is the