Update Issue - affects any instal

[mark one]

installArchives() failed: dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 4384:

 invalid package name (character `,' not allowed (only letters, digits and characters `-+._'))

Error in function:

cannot update ubuntu

Help please

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: dpkg 1.16.0.3ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.22-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic i686
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Nov 30 21:20:54 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: dpkg
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-11-28 (1 days ago)

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Raphaël Hertzog (hertzog)]

It looks like /var/lib/dpkg/available is corrupted, you can try to run "sudo dpkg --clear-avail" to get rid of your problem.