[PLUG] Error in installing spamassasiin, debian testing

[Mike Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

I run a Debian testing mailserver, to screen my Exchange server from viruses
and spam. On this server, i am running spamassassin v2.63. I'm now trying yo
update to spamassassin v3.0-2. But I am encountering the following error:

The following packages will be upgraded:
  spamassassin
  1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 563 not upgraded.
  Need to get 0B/766kB of archives. After unpacking 401kB will be used.
  Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
  Writing extended state information... Done
  Preconfiguring packages ...
  dpkg: parse error, in file /var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 1:
   field name r' must be followed by colon
   E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
   Ack!  Something bad happened while installing packages.  Trying to
recover:
dpkg: parse error, in file /var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 1:
 field name r' must be followed by colon
 Reading Package Lists... Done
 Building Dependency Tree
 Reading extended state information
 Initializing package states... Done
 Reading task descriptions... Done
 
 
Line 1 of /var/lib/dpkg/available says:
 
root@handyman# more /var/lib/dpkg/available
 er files and development shared libraries libraries for
 LessTif. LessTif, made by the Hungry Programmers, is a free (LGPL-ed)
 version of OSF/Motif; it aims ultimately at binary compatibility with
Motif
 2.1.
  .
 Contains static libraries and header files for libXm and libMrm.
   
  
And then continues with packages named "nowebm".

So I'm thinking that this file is corrupt. Can I just delete it; re-run
"aptitude update" (I prefer aptitude to apt-get); let it rebuild the file;
and then I can go on and install my sa update? I can't run a dpkg -l, or
anything.

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