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Description of problem:
The rpmdb-* package is created (and hence downloaded) daily.

The size of rpmdb-* can be reduced significantly by
   a) including only Packages in %files
   b) doing --rebuilddb --dbpath /wherever in %post
   c) reducing the number of indices that are generated
      by --rebuilddb (Providenames and Basenames are
      of most use) in order to speed up --rebuilddb

Add --define '%_dbi_tags Packages:Providenames:Basenames'
to generate only the Providenames and Basenames indices.

Add %ghost to establish clean erasures for the indices, and %attr
to establish owner.group.

Add a cron script and ignore --rebuilddb failures if you
are worried about %post failures. The cron script should
attempt to clean up any/all .../*rebuilddb.123456 directories
from previous --rebuilddb failures as well.

Please also remember to do --justdb on signed packages, and
to import the public keys used for signing, when producing
the rpmdb-* package(s).

A daily patch-like delta rpmdb-* update to add/delete/modify
header entries on the client rpmdb for only the headers that
have changed is also quite doable, but I'll leave that for a
later bugzilla. In fact, headers could be delivered directly
to either up2date/yum caches, and then installed into
the rpmdb-* from %post and/or cron. Careful: yum/up2date
have slightly different headers than what is stored in
and rpmdb, rpmdb headers have appended signature tags
and prepended magic.

    

Additional info:

Upon request.