  A prescription is presented for real-time finite-temperature perturbation
theory in covariant gauges, in which only the two physical degrees of freedom
of the gauge-field propagator acquire thermal parts. The propagators for the
unphysical degrees of freedom of the gauge field, and for the Faddeev-Popov
ghost field, are independent of temperature. This prescription is applied to
the calculation of the one-loop gluon self-energy and the two-loop interaction
pressure, and is found to be simpler to use than the conventional one.
