Bug#282272: dpkg won't give help on missing `available' file

[Christoph Burgmer <chrislb@gmx.de>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.10.25
Severity: minor


After a system crash '/var/lib/dpkg/available' was lost.
Updating via aptitude gives the follwing output:

> dpkg: 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)
> Ack!  Something bad happened while installing packages.  Trying to recover:
> dpkg: failed to open package info file /var/lib/dpkg/available' for reading:
> No such file or directory

I then rebuilt the information with 'deselect update' after a short search
on the net.
dpkg may inform the user how to rebuilt the file if it is missing.

Regards,
Christoph Burgmer

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.7
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  dselect                     1.10.25      a user tool to manage Debian packa
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-18 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information