Description of problem: any rpm operation hangs, strace for "rpm -qa" attached. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): assam> rpm --version RPM version 4.1 How reproducible: Not sure how to create the initial state. I suspect there may have been an aborted rpm operation which may have created an inconcistent state. Rebuilding the rpm database seems to fix it, but after two or three rpm operations the hang is back and will happen reliably at every subsequent operation. I can provide a complete snapshot of /var/lib/rpm is it is helpful.
Created attachment 99838 [details] gzipped strace of "rpm -qa" strace of "rpm -qa". The process needed to be killed with "kill -9".
Try rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db* Did that fix?
Yes. On the mailing list, you pointed me in the right direction (SIGPIPE), and I now save the output of rpm -q into a temporary file prior to further processing.