On my system, this happened because anaconda mounted my ubuntu root (/dev/sda5) on /mnt/sysimage instead of the newly created /dev/vg0/fc16b_root. Obviously, there was no rpmdb in the debian-based tree.
Now the question is: Why did it use the plain partition instead of the lvm volume I specified?
This happens with boot.iso[1] (x86_64) downloaded on 2011-09-14, but not with Fedora-16-Beta-x86_64-netinst.iso[2]
The first (and second) time this happened was with a bare-metal install.
The third time was in a VirtualBox VM -- it is 100% reproducible.
I can package up the VM if anyone is interested.
1 sha256 = f8a33b002182b559cf5e5c6b01cc18686965fc871712b71ae237feacbc757747
2 sha256 = 89bf5906c68d4e940cae11f4f8d8bad85d591d9a87917e41d1bde8351cf271b4
This should be fixed in the F16 Beta, as you seem to have reported on your own..
I'm not completely certain since there are no logs attached but I suspect this has the same root cause as bug 693095.
If you see this issue in the Beta, please reopen this bug and include the log files from /tmp as attachments.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 693095 ***
abrt version: 2.0.5 executable: /usr/bin/python hashmarkername: anaconda kernel: 3.0.0-1.fc16.x86_64 product: Fedora reason: YumBaseError: Error: rpmdb open failed time: Wed Aug 17 08:07:50 2011 version: 16-Alpha description: :The following was filed automatically by anaconda: :anaconda 16.14.6 exception report :Traceback (most recent call first): : File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 1024, in _getsysver : raise Errors.YumBaseError("Error: " + str(e)) : File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 879, in readStartupConfig : startupconf.releasever = _getsysver(startupconf.installroot, startupconf.distroverpkg) : File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 300, in _getConfig : startupconf = config.readStartupConfig(fn, root) : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/yuminstall.py", line 778, in doConfigSetup : yum.YumBase._getConfig(self) : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/yuminstall.py", line 362, in setup : self.doConfigSetup(root=self.anaconda.rootPath) : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/yuminstall.py", line 1240, in doBackendSetup : self.ayum.setup() : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/backend.py", line 192, in doBackendSetup : if anaconda.backend.doBackendSetup(anaconda) == DISPATCH_BACK: : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/dispatch.py", line 348, in dispatch : self.dir = self.steps[self.step].target(self.anaconda) : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/dispatch.py", line 235, in go_forward : self.dispatch() : File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pyanaconda/gui.py", line 1198, in nextClicked : self.anaconda.dispatch.go_forward() :YumBaseError: Error: rpmdb open failed