Bad rpmdb, where'd this come from?

[Harry Putnam <reader newsguy com>]

Running 7.1 and seems to have been running ok for quite a while.
Today running up2date -u as I do every so often I got a few updates.
imap, imlib, and fetchmail and sharutils.

I realized I had no need for imap so just rpm -e'd those instead of
installing the new ones.  When I did I got this message:

 rpm -e imap-devel

 rpmdb: Suspiciously high nelem of 4294967295 on page 0
 error: db4 error(-30979) from db->verify: DB_VERIFY_BAD: Database verification failed

Then running rpm -UvhF *.rpm on what was left

 Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
    1:imlib                  ########################################### [ 20%]
    2:fetchmail              ########################################### [ 40%]
    3:imlib-cfgeditor        ########################################### [ 60%]
    4:imlib-devel            ########################################### [ 80%]
    5:sharutils              ########################################### [100%]
 rpmdb: Suspiciously high nelem of 4294967295 on page 0
 error: db4 error(-30979) from db->verify: DB_VERIFY_BAD: Database verification failed

The number after `high nelem of' in the first error may have been a
different number.  I didn' actually keep that one, and used one that
followed for example.

Anyone know what is happening here?

  rpm -V rpm reveals this information:
   root # rpm -V rpm
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Dirnames
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Filemd5s
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Installtid
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Provideversion
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Requireversion
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Sha1header
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/Sigmd5
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/__db.001
  .....UG. c /var/lib/rpm/__db.002

And a ls -al shows:
(NOTE: The two files beginning with double underscore do not show up)
   root # ls -la /var/lib/rpm 
  total 18612
  drwxr-xr-x    2 rpm      rpm          4096 May 25 07:22 .
  drwxr-xr-x   15 root     root         4096 Mar 19 11:46 ..
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm       5214208 May 25 07:11 Basenames
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm         12288 May 25 07:11 Conflictname
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        86016 May 25 07:11 Dirnames
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root       626688 May 25 07:11 Filemd5s
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm         12288 May 25 07:11 Group
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         8192 May 25 07:11 Installtid
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm         24576 May 25 07:11 Name
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm      14372864 May 25 07:11 Packages
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm         86016 May 25 07:11 Providename
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        12288 May 25 07:11 Provideversion
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm        118784 May 25 07:11 Requirename
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        12288 May 25 07:11 Requireversion
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        12288 May 25 07:11 Sha1header
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        12288 May 25 07:11 Sigmd5
  -rw-r--r--    1 rpm      rpm         12288 May 25 07:11 Triggername

Normal queries work as usual
   root # rpm -q sharutils
  sharutils-4.2.1-8.7.x

I fixed what appears to be a permissions error and reset everything to
rpm rpm.  That silenced rpm -V.

But it seems some things just don't work as they should:

 root # rpm -Uvh fetchmail-5.9.0-10.i386.rpm
   Preparing...     ########################################### [100%]
   1:fetchmail   ########################################### [100%]

   rpmdb: Suspiciously high nelem of 4294967295 on page 0 error: db4
   error(-30979) from db->verify: DB_VERIFY_BAD: Database verification
   failed

Although the install seems to have worked:
   # rpm -q fetchmail
   fetchmail-5.9.0-10