Error on upgrade

[mcellius]

I tried to run

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

in Raring and got the following error:

99 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/120 MB of archives.
After this operation, 677 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 0:
 field name `#' must be followed by colon
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

I've been running Raring on this computer for a couple months, and have been running updates and upgrades daily; this is the first problem I've had of this sort. Anyone else? Anyone know how to fix it?

[zika]

I tried to run

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

in Raring and got the following error:

99 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/120 MB of archives.
After this operation, 677 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 0:
 field name `#' must be followed by colon
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

I've been running Raring on this computer for a couple months, and have been running updates and upgrades daily; this is the first problem I've had of this sort. Anyone else? Anyone know how to fix it?

In Your place, I would try moving /var/lib/dpkg/available to some other place or (simply) renaming it (/var/lib/dpkg/available.zika for example) and trying update/upgrade again...

[schragge]

You can safely delete /var/lib/dpkg/available.

sudo dpkg --clear-avail

It's rarely used nowadays (the main user is dselect), and can be easily recreated if needed by dselect or aptitude from the apt package database:

sudo aptitude update

or

sudo dselect --expert update

Note that sudo apt-get update doesn't update /var/lib/dpkg/available

[mcellius]

Zika: Thank you! I tried this:

In Your place, I would try moving /var/lib/dpkg/available to some other place or (simply) renaming it (/var/lib/dpkg/available.zika for example) and trying update/upgrade again...

It didn't work. I got this:

dpkg: error: failed to open package info file `/var/lib/dpkg/available' for reading: No such file or directory
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Apparently it needs that file. (But I did, in your honor, rename the file to "available.zika".)

[zika]

You can safely delete /var/lib/dpkg/available.

sudo dpkg --clear-avail

It's rarely used nowadays (the main user is dselect), and can be easily recreated if needed by dselect or aptitude from the apt package database:

sudo aptitude update

or

sudo dselect --expert update

Note that sudo apt-get update doesn't update /var/lib/dpkg/available

I did not use aptitude in weeks but still file /var/lib/dpkg/available carry the time and date of my last update/upgrade via apt-get several minutes ago... Not the time of update but of one of these:

:~$ alias UPALL
alias UPALL='/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/apt-get update ; /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/apt-get upgrade ; /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/apt-get clean ; /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/apt-get --purge autoremove'

[zika]

Zika: Thank you! I tried this:

It didn't work. I got this:

dpkg: error: failed to open package info file `/var/lib/dpkg/available' for reading: No such file or directory
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Apparently it needs that file. (But I did, in your honor, rename the file to "available.zika".)

That is why I suggested You to rename, so that it can be returned if needed...

[schragge]

Well, obviously it's presence gets checked by dpkg, but the information in it doesn't get used by apt-get. As said, you can

sudo dpkg --clear-avail

any time.

On my system, I use custom /var/lib/dpkg/available that contains only packages with priority standard or higher. I generate it from /var/lib/apt/lists/* with a script.

Update.
Besides dselect, the only other command I can think of that evaluates it is dpkg -l (for not installed packages).

[mcellius]

Schragge: That worked, thank you!

Just to be obsessive about everything, I copied available.zika back, then followed your instructions for clearing it. I then ran update and upgrade again, and it made it all the way through. Excellent!

Thank you, both of you, for your help. I was figuring I was just going to need to reinstall Raring - not a big deal, as it's for testing, anyway, but I didn't really want to do that today. Now it all looks good.

[schragge]

I'm curious, what /var/lib/dpkg/availalble contains now, after you've updated the package database? I guess it's still empty even if it got timestamped during update.

[zika]

This is why I like to be on Forum like this... I learn every day... Thank You both of You. For stimulus and for new pieces of puzzle...