__db files not recreated after rpm --rebuilddb

["Russell Harrison" <rtlm10 gmail com>]

We have several machines that are not recreating the __db files after a rpm
--rebuilddb

Since we have so many machines getting corrupted a
rpmdb because of the stat on hung nfs mounts problem we frequently have to rebuild
the rpmdb.

after running:
# rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
#
rpm -vv --rebuilddb
# rpm -qa

there are no __db files in
/var/lib/rpm/ and when we check for stale locks we get an error.

# /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_stat -c -h /var/lib/rpm
db_stat:
DB_ENV->open: /var/lib/rpm: No such file or directory

However, rpm -qa and other operations seem to work fine.

strace'ing the rpm -qa shows that it doesn't see the files or recreate
them.

access("/var/lib/rpm/__db.001", F_OK)   = -1
ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/var/lib/rpm/__db.002",
0xbfffe540) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/var/lib/rpm/__db.003", 0xbfffe5a0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or
directory)
access("/var/lib/rpm/__db.001", F_OK)   = -1
ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Doing
a find on the whole file system doesn't turn up any other __db files
either.  I'm a bit puzzled about how this is working at all.

I've opened a support case with RedHat but was wondering if any of you had seen this problem before.

Russell