yum Error:rpmdb open failed

I’m trying to run yum update and I’m running this error:

rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db3 error(-30974) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - (-30974)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
CRITICAL:yum.main:

Error: rpmdb open failed

I checked page like this one but running yum clean all runs the same error.

How can I solve this?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

This is how I fixed my problem.

You may fix this by cleaning out rpm database. But first, in order to minimize the risk, make sure you create a backup of files in /var/lib/rpm/ using cp command:

mkdir /root/backups.rpm.mm_dd_yyyy/
cp -avr /var/lib/rpm/ /root/backups.rpm.mm_dd_yyyy/

The try this to fix this problem:

# rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
# db_verify /var/lib/rpm/Packages
# rpm --rebuilddb
# yum clean all

And finally verify that error has gone with the following yum command

# yum update

Method 2

Thanks Alex, your answer worked for me apart from one slight change I had to make.

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

returned errors

rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/rpm/__db.001': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/rpm/__db.002': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/rpm/__db.004': Is a directory

so I had to recurse with

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

Method 3

I tried the above one it did’nt work

below works fine

# cd /var/lib
# tar -zcvf /var/preserve/rpmdb-$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S).tar.gz rpm

Note: This tar backup can be used if the attempt to recover the RPM database has issues.

Verify integrity of the Packages file:

# cd /var/lib/rpm
# rm -f __db*      # to avoid stale locks
# /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_verify Packages

# mv Packages Packages.orig
# /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_dump Packages.orig | /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_load Packages


# rpm -vv --rebuilddb

Once again verify RPM database:

# cd /var/lib/rpm
# /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_verify Packages

Method 4

All I had to do was to delete the two file with the “.lock” extension, and the three files that started with “__db”.

# rm /var/lib/rpm/.dbenv.lock
# rm /var/lib/rpm/.rpm.lock
# rm /var/lib/rpm/__db*

After that, yum update worked.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0