rh7.3 filesystem becomes read only after update!?

[kles koe]

Hi folks,

last month i upgraded a rh7.3 server that has been running without problems 
for over 3 years or so with the the latest legacy kernel and all seemed well 
(i always apply the legacy updates after a few days).
yesterday i updated to the new sharutils package.

last night the server started giving me trouble.
seems i can't create files anymore!
i get messages like filesystem is read only.

eg:
# touch blah
touch: creating `blah': Read-only file system

however, mount gives me:
# mount
/dev/md2 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/md1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

i noticed this problem because apache failed to restart:
# /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl startssl
Ouch! ap_mm_create(1048576, "/usr/local/apache/logs/httpd.mm.11813") failed
Error: MM: mm:core: failed to open semaphore file (Read-only file system): 
OS: No such file or directory
/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl startssl: httpd could not be started

- after the reboot for the kernel last month the server is still running 
(uptime 28 days now).
- the filesystem isn't full either.
- can't find anything in the log files that can give me a clue as to what 
could be wrong
- i have another 7.3 server that has been configured in practically the same 
way but doesnt have the sharutils package installed and that one has seems 
to be running just fine although the kernel was updated a few days later 
(uptime 23 days now).


nothing else happened on this system lately so i the only thing i can think 
of is that it has something to do with either the latest kernel or sharutils 
package...
does anybody else have this problem?

i have no clue as to where this problem comes from or how to resolve it.

i tried to remove the sharutils package alltogether but that doesnt work 
either:
# rpm -e sharutils
error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open /var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm


any ideas would be very welcome!

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