whoops, never mind, i was just being dense

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday mindspring com>]

  forget that last posting, someone just pointed out that i'd been down
this road before and i forgot about the user/chroot issue.  i definitely
need some time off ...

rday

p.s.  although it is still unnerving that, although the operation fails,
i still get partial results installed for the rpm DB, and in *different*
directories.  i'll look more into that, it still seems a bit odd.