database mess up

[Panu Matilainen]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Patrick Dupre wrote:

>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> For a reason that I ignore my database is totallt mess up.
>>> rpm --rebuilddb only rebuild iy partially.
>>> The packages are installed, but rpm --rebuilddb does not see them.
>>> How can I recover them without resintalling them manually ?
>> 
>> Find the latest intact /var/log/rpmpkgs* file (ie one that got generated 
>> before the db got corrupted, file size should be a good indicator) and copy 
>> it somewhere safe, say /root/rpmpkgs.backup. Now you should be able to make 
>> fairly good recovery with something like:
>> 
>> # mv /var/lib/rpm /var/lib/rpm.busted
>> # mkdir /var/tmp/download; cd /var/tmp/download
>> # yumdownloader `sed -e "s/.rpm$//g" /root/rpmpkgs.backup`
>> # rpm -Uvh --notriggers --noscripts --justdb *.rpm
>> 
>> The question of course is, what got the database corrupted to begin with.
>> Did anything out of the ordinary happen at that time, like /var getting 
>> full? Segfaults logged in /var/log/messages*? What filesystem is /var on?
>> 
> Hello Panu,
>
> The larger rpmpkgs file is the following one:
> rpmpkgs-20090111
> from 2008-12-30
> The following one is only 462 block compared to 61748
> Concerning the message files, I attached the last one, I do not see anything 
> bad, the CPU0 temperature is 34 °C, so I do not thing that it is
> wrong. However the -12V and +12V are wrong according to gkrellM system 
> monitor. But is it right, I doubt that the machine would work with 0.63 and 
> 3.95 V instead.
> Furthermore concerning the messages file, /messages-20090111 is empty
> as well as the following one: messages-20090118
>
> /var is ext3 (on /)
> /usr, /usr/lib, /usr/local are lvm2
>
> What do you thing ?

Nothing out of ordinary there.. what does 'stat -f /var' say on these 
problematic systems (as you said you have two systems with these 
problems)?

Noticed from the df output in another mail that the root partition was 
fairly small so it might be subject to a more or less known issue of 
filesystem blocksize of 1024 (at least on ext3) causing rpmdb corruption.

 	- Panu -