Fixing damaged /var/lib/dpkg/available

Sometimes the file /var/lib/dpkg/available is corrupted. When you use the package managing tools you get messages similar to these:

dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 1128 package 'dash':
 missing description
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 2687 package 'login':
 missing description

Usually this is not a big issue but it may be annoying. To fix it, just execute next commands:

# mv /var/lib/dpkg/available /root/
# touch /var/lib/dpkg/available
# sh -c 'for i in /var/lib/apt/lists/*_Packages; do dpkg --merge-avail "$i"; done'

Seen at http://askubuntu.com/questions/109994/dpkg-error-parsing-file-var-lib-dpkg-status-near-line-6449