So, it's taken a while but I've finally managed to break an rpm
database. Properly. Symptoms:

Querying the database does this:

# rpm -q pygtk2.0
error: rpmdbNextIterator: skipping h#    1615 Header V3 DSA signature:
BAD, key ID 70771ff3

Likewise, using urpmi to attempt to install a package gives similar
messages over and over again until I quite forcibly terminate urpmi.

rpm --rebuilddb had no effect, likewise moving my /var/lib/rpm directory
and using the db_dump | db_load trick to rebuild the databases seemed to
do nothing whatsoever.

running "rpm -qa" produces the expected results, interspersed with error
messages like the one above (though the header number is different each
time).

Now, the advice I would give anyone else in my situation is to remove
"/var/lib/rpm/__*" and run rpm --rebuilddb. Alas there are no files
called "/var/lib/rpm/__*", so this appears to be a different beast.

I also hoped that this was merely rpm telling me that I really should be
using gpg keys to verify the packages I'm installing, so I went off and
found them all and did rpm --import, but to no avail.

At this point it's looking like my best option is to copy the
/var/lib/rpm directory from another computer and ask urpmi to upgrade
the box from there, but I'm really hoping there's another way.

Any suggestions? Even suggestions about unravelling the contents of a
db4 database would be most welcome.

Thanks,

James.


-- 
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug

Reply via email to