--rebuilddb hangs opening db index

[sean]

I've a remote FC4 machine which had a bunch of duplicate 
packages installed. An earlier thread suggested I try 
synaptic over vnc.

Worked  pretty well. synaptic came up with a dialog showing 
duplicate packages. synaptic also showed a "broken" package, 
which it said it fixed.

Then  I ran - over telnet - yum remove pkg-x.y.z, which hung 
at the end:

Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
   Removing  : lrzsz 
####################### [ 1/12]
[..............]
   Removing  : mt-st 
####################### [10/12]



So again over telnet, I tried rpm --rebuilddb. That hangs also:
rpm -vv --rebuilddb
D: rebuilding database /var/lib/rpm into 
/var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.11610
D: creating directory /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.11610
D: opening old database with dbapi 3
D: opening  db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages joinenv
D: opening  db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages rdonly mode=0x0

Checked ps aux, no yum synaptic or apt-get running. top 
shows no activity for rpmdb.

NOW, what do I do?