Installing RPMs without booting normally

[Jesse Merriman <jessemerriman warpmail net>]

Hello,

I posted the following to linuxforum.com[*], but I was wondering if 
anyone on this list can help me. Oh, and I'm running Mandrake 9.1. 
Here's the problem:

-------------------------------------
Recently while messing around with a new kernel I tried updating 
initscripts, but must have screwed something up because it was 
uninstalled and the new one was not installed right, so I can't boot up 
correctly now. I do have the original initscripts RPM, though, so I 
tried booting with the install CD and going into rescue mode, mounting 
my partitions under /mnt, going to the console, and then installing the 
rpm, but since the system was not booted normally this fails with errors 
like:

error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - No such file or directory (2)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm

So, my question is this: is it possible to install an RPM onto an 
unbooted system, as I have tried to do? Or is there some other way to 
restore it? [Note: I've also asked this at linuxquestions.org, the 
thread is here: 
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/sh...&threadid=86112 
<http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86112> ]

-------------------------------------

Thanks,

-jdm

[*] http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1884