Recovering from a corrupted RPM database

Although everything is done to ensure that your RPM databases are intact, your RPM database may become corrupt and unuseable. This happens mainly if the filesystem on which the rpm db resides is suddenly inaccessible (full, read-only, reboot, or so on).

This recipe will show you the two ways in which you can attempt to restore your RPM database.

Getting ready

Verify that your system is backed up in some way.

How to do it…

We'll start with the easiest option and the one with the highest success rate in these steps:

  1. Start by creating a backup of your corrupt rpm db, as follows:
    ~]# cd; tar zcvf rpm-db.tar.gz /var/lib/rpm/*
  2. Remove stale lock files if they exist through the following command:
    ~]# rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
  3. Now, verify the integrity of the Packages database via the following:
    ~]# /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_verify /var/lib/rpm/Packages; echo $?

    If the previous step prints 0, proceed to Step 7.

  4. Rename the Packages file (don't delete it, we'll need it!), as follows:
    ~]# mv /var/lib/rpm/Packages  /var/lib/rpm/Packages.org
  5. Now, dump the Packages db from the original Packages db by executing the following command:
    ~]# cd /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_dump Packages.org | /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_load Packages
  6. Verify the integrity of the newly created Packages database. Run the following:
    ~]# /usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb_verify /var/lib/rpm/Packages; echo $?

    If the exit code is not 0, you will need to restore the database from backup.

  7. Rebuild the rpm indexes, as follows:
    ~]# rpm -vv --rebuilddb
  8. Next, use the following command to check the rpm db with yum for any other issues (this may take a long time):
    ~]# yum check
  9. Restore the SELinux context of the rpm database through the following command:
    ~]# restorecon -R -v /var/lib/rpm
    How to do it…

There's more…

If, for some reason, you are unable to recover your RPM database, there is one final option left. Enterprises tend to have standardized builds, and many servers are installed with the same packages, so copy the healthy /var/lib/rpm directory from another server with the exact same package set to the corrupted one, and perform the preceding recipe's steps to ensure that everything is okay.

Although you'll find additional tools that can save your skin (such as RPM cron), it's usually more practical to have a decent backup.

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