RPM Database broken

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Francois Massonneau wrote:

> Le Jeudi 20 Octobre 2005 07:46, Gilboa Davara a écrit :
>> First, please do not repost your problem repeatedly.
>> While I understand that you are in a jam, this is no reason to report
>> the same message for the 4'th time. now.
>
> Yes, I saw that. really sorry, but I got a mailer problem.
>
>> Second, can you get a list of what you installed by using rpm -qa and/or
>> kickstart file?
>
> rpm -qa gives me nothing.
> I read the archives of the rpm fedora mailing list, and it seems I do not have
> a real solution. SOmeone gave a script once, but I don't know how it can fix
> my pb. A fresh install seems my only way out. I'm gonna wait a little bit
> more if someone has a good solution... Thanks and sorry again for the
> multiple posts. Francois

If you ran rpm --initdb (as you indicated in another post), then you 
completely emptied your RPM DB.

Do you have /var/log/rpmpkgs*?  If so, you could try the following:

(1) Download a complete set of RPMs listed in your last good rpmpkgs log 
and place them in a directory.

(2) Create a script that, for each file in /var/log/rpmpkgs, executes

 	rpm -U --justdb <filename>

(3) If you hadn't added, deleted, or updated any RPMs since the date of 
the log file you used, you should be done.  Otherwise, add, delete, or 
update the remaining packages by hand using the --justdb option.

Maybe somebody could suggest a shortcut.  I don't know if yum can help 
here or not.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs