I have written a script to automatically verify and repair the RPM database each day, called rpm_verify_db, at <http://georgeanelson.com/rpm-verifydb.htm>. The RPM database is vital to the maintenace of Fedora or any Redhat-branch Linux. Yum uses it for updates. Nothing ever checks it for corruption, until RPM finally complains. I personally could not upgrade to FC6 because of silent corruption, so I wrote this package. RPM's developer, Jeff Johnson, believes that RPM database corruption is so extremely rare that it is not worth checking for, and he also notes that the check that I am using is inadequate. It is, however, the best /check/ available in RPM. It can fail to detect problems that RPM may report when doing transactions that update the RPM database. See the thread at Redhat's rpm-list, "SUG: Automatic RPM database verification and repair". RPM may be able to rebuild the database if corruption is found (by RPM, or by my package, or by running "rpm --verifydb" by hand). To rebuild the RPM database, run "rpm --rebuilddb" as root (which is what my package does). However, --rebuilddb simply rebuilds the database; it does not say whether there were errors in the old database, so it is not itself a /check/ of the database. -- ____________________________________________________________________ TonyN.:' The Great Writ <mailto:tonynelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> ' is no more. <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>
