Bug 823027

Yes, well known. Rpm requires what it requires for a reason, the fundamental issue is the lack of proper transition from db4 -> libdb during the rawhide cycle that introduced libdb.

For rpm at least, this has been fixed in F >= 17 but there's no good way to address it in the already released versions: there are several packages (including rpm) depending on db4-utils that would break if the /usr/bin/db_foo utilities just changed to libdb versions. Technically resolvable by rebuilding all the packages against libdb and releasing a big update covering all the related packages, fo but changing the underlying BDB version is not necessarily (depends a bit on how the software uses BDB) that can be sanely/safely done in an errata-update. Rpm could switch to internal copy of the current BDB 4.x version that would help a bit, but doesn't resolve the entire issue.

As rpm and these other utilities now require a not-current version of db utils, what about renaming all those utils to db48_stat, db48_recover, db48_tuner, etc.?

This was done in the past, IIRC, and it does usefully indicate that $PACKAGE requires a specific version of utils, and cannot make do with the current version.

Sure... but again that's something that should've been done in rawhide when libdb was introduced, changing "common" utility names in a released distro is rude. Fedora might not have all that many bits and pieces relying on those utilities but who knows about 3rd party repositories and other software.

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