Up2date failing or rpm broken

[shmuel siegel]

After a massive update, approximately 50 packages, up2date no longer
works. Get the following error message


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/up2date", line 12, in ?
    import rpm
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rpmmodule.so: undefined symbol: rpmdsBT

in addition running rpm -q rpm gives 

package rpm is not installed