Repair the RPM database Revision as of Thursday, 28 May 2026 at 13:06 UTC
I had a problem with running a yum update on some package. The process would sleep indefinitely. A clue that something was wrong with the RPM database (at /var/lib/rpm) was that running rpm -qa would hang as well.
The solution is to rebuild the RPM database. In short:
#Ā Backups!
tarĀ -czvfĀ /tmp/rpm.tgzĀ /var/lib/rpm
#Ā RemoveĀ theĀ databaseĀ locks
rmĀ -fĀ /var/lib/rpm/__db*
#Ā Rebuild!
rpmĀ -vvĀ --rebuilddb
That should do it.