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rpmdb: unable to join the environment

This weekend I was contacted by a client regarding a server that had run out of room on the main hard drive. Among the things that were corrupted by the drive filling up was the RPM database.

When trying to query of upgrade any package, the error message

rpmdb: unable to join the environment
error: db4 error(11) from dbenv->open: Resource temporarily unavailable
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Resource temporarily unavailable (11)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
warning: /root/webmin-1.360-1.noarch.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 11f63c51
rpmdb: unable to join the environment
error: db4 error(11) from dbenv->open: Resource temporarily unavailable
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
rpmdb: unable to join the environment
error: db4 error(11) from dbenv->open: Resource temporarily unavailable
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm

A search turned up this howto on repairing the db.

These two commands made quick work of the fix. First remove any old lock files:

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*

Then rebuild the RPM database:

rpm -vv --rebuilddb

Popularity: 90% [?]

Posted in SysAdmin.


3 Responses

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  1. mahbubeh says

    thank you so much for your useful content

  2. Peter says

    Ditto. This was very useful. Thank you

  3. Erik says

    Thanks very much, this fixed my problem within seconds!



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