Re: editing /var/lib/dpkg/available

[Waqqas Dadabhoy <waqqas@waq.dyndns.tv>]

SOLVED: I edited the available file manually, then used "dpkg
--update-avail /var/lib/dpkg/available".

Thank you, Camaleón, Goran, and Wolodja .

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Wolodja Wentland
<wolodja.wentland@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Have a look at /var/lib/dpkg/available-old as well, as it should contain
> a recent backup of the available file. I wouldn't necessarily edit those
> files, because you just might make it worse.
>
> If available-old does not help, you can:
>
>    1. apt-cache dumpavail > /var/lib/dpkg/available
>
>       dumpavail prints out an available list to stdout. This is
>       suitable for use with dpkg(1) and is used by the dselect(1)
>       method.
>
>    2. dpkg --update-avail /var/lib/dpkg/available
>
>       Update dpkg's and dselect's idea of which packages are available.
>       With action --merge-avail, old information is combined with
>       information from Packages- file.  With action --update-avail, old
>       information is replaced with the information in the
>       Packages-file. The Packages-file distributed with Debian is sim‐
>       ply named Packages. dpkg keeps its record of available packages
>       in /var/lib/dpkg/available.
>
>       A simpler one-shot command to retrieve and update the available
>       file is dselect update. Note that this file is mostly useless if
>       you don't use dselect  but an APT-based frontend: APT has its own
>       system to keep track of available packages.
>
> OR (alternatively)
>
>    1. rm /var/lib/dpkg/available
>    2. dselect update