RPM error: cannot open Depends index using db1 - Invalid argument (22)

Howdy,

I recently upgraded from linux kernel 2.2.17 to 2.2.19 on a redhat 6.2 machine. The upgrade went fine, but after I rebooted with the new kernel (which went fine) my RPM appears to be broken, whenever I try to install/update something with rpm I (sometimes) get the following error:

cannot open Depends index using db1 - Invalid argument (22)

And then (sometimes) when it tries to install the package it reports:

Preparing... Segmentation fault

I'm using rpm 4.0.2

I say sometimes because some packages will install. I've done the rpm -K --nogpg check on the md5 checksum for the packages that return errors but RPM says that they're "OK".

Anybody have any idea what might be going on or recommend a course of action?

thanks,

Eric Anderson
Information Systems Developer
University of Oregon - Charles H. Lundquist College of Business
eric@lcbmail.uoregon.edu

Did you set up your box so that you can boot between the two kernels? That's what redhat (and a lot of other wise linux folks) recommend. . .

What I'm getting at- if you boot to your old kernel and get the same error, then these problems may not be due to your kernel upgrade.

Why did you upgrade your kernel? You know the old saying, "if it ain't broken, don't fix it. . ."

Yup, I built a new kernel and then added two entries in lilo.conf. One for my old 2.2.17 kernel and another for the new 2.2.19. When I rebooted into the new kernel the problem cropped up. So I rebooted back into my old kernel and the problem was still there.

I guess I'm simply interested in what the hell the error message means:

error: cannot open Depends index using db1 - Invalid argument (22)

when I run a simple command like:

rpm -Uvh some-package-version.rpm

thanks for the reply,
e

don´t know for sure, but seems like your rpm database is broken. maybe you did an update when the harddrive was full - or maybe it´s just a bug in the rpm program.

you can rebuild the database with:
rpm --rebuiddb

but i can´t tell you if it will drop broken entries or actually rebuild them then..