[Gllug] Recovering a RH6.2 system with a corrupt RPM database

[John Hearns]

On 4 Dec 2002, 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.
> 
Short and idiot answer which I will no doubt be laughed at for.
Install another 'clean' 6.2 machine.
Copy over the rpm binaries, and shared libraries which it depends on.
Reboot and do an rpm --rebuilddb

A quick ldd shows me that rpm is statically linked.
This of course makes much sense.
So I idly wonder if replacing the rpm binary is worth a giggle.
And can one delete the RPM database entirely and start from scratch?
Again maybe copy one over from a 'clean' system before rebuild?



BTW< on a RH 6.2 system:
> md5sum /bin/rpm
ed2c0a86492cb58d8b3fd6648c30d81a  /bin/rpm


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