Why can't I update my repository updates in 12.04? [duplicate]

Question

I tried to install updates via the update manager, so then I used terminal and got

dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 0:
field name `../../../../java-7-openjdk-common/jre/lib/ext/sunjce_provider.jar' must be followed by colon
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

so if anyone could help me i would appreciate that thank you

Answer 1

From the below error,it was clearly shown that your /var/lib/dpkg/available file was corrupted.

dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 0:
field name `../../../../java-7-openjdk-common/jre/lib/ext/sunjce_provider.jar' must be followed by colon
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Solution for the above problem is to replace the current /var/lib/dpkg/available file with another /var/lib/dpkg/available-old backup file.

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/available
sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/available-old /var/lib/dpkg/available

Now try,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -f