[Gllug] Recovering a RH6.2 system with a corrupt RPM database
John Winters
john at linuxemporium.co.uk
Wed Dec 4 10:24:41 UTC 2002
On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 09:33, Xander D Harkness wrote:
> John Winters wrote:
> > One of my customers has a RH 6.2 system on which the RPM database has
> > become corrupted. Each time any reference to the ppp package is
> > made using the rpm tool, the tool crashes with a segmentation fault.
> >
> > That is, if you do an "rpm -qa" you get a listing up to and including
> > the ppp package, then rpm crashes. If you do a query on a package
> > alphabetically before the ppp one it works. If you do a query on one
> > alphabetically after it crashes.
> >
> > An "rpm --rebuilddb" also crashes with a segmentation fault.
> >
> > Is there any way of recovering the system without re-installing? It's
> > working fine apart from the corrupt rpm database.
> >
> > TIA,
> > John
> >
> > P.S. The system is patched pretty much up to date, including the the
> > RPM 4 update.
> >
> I had similar problems with a redhat 7.1 machine. I luckily had another
> machine with a sort of similar set up. I copied /var/lib/rpm from one
> to the other and all worked well. Any chance that you have a similar
> machine?
Yes, I can have. Did you get long term problems with packages being out
of step? (That is, the RPM database thinks a package is installed but
it isn't, or vice versa.)
Presumably one can use --force to force the system to install a package
it thinks is already installed.
Does the /var/lib/rpm directory contain *all* the files which rpm
updates? In other words, if I save the existing directory and contents
and then start experimenting with a new one, is there any danger of me
not being able to get back to the start position?
John
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