As bogofilter's lead developer I happened to have a DB_CONFIG file in the directory when I ran "make rpm". This causes 'rpm -qf' to fail. rpm shouldn't be looking in my current directory for DB_CONFIG! [relson@osage tmp]$ rpm -q rpm rpm-4.2.3-9mdk [relson@osage tmp]$ rpm -qf /bin/bash bash-3.0-2mdk [relson@osage tmp]$ echo set_flags DB_LOG_AUTOREMOVE > DB_CONFIG [relson@osage tmp]$ rpm -qf /bin/bash error: cannot open Basenames index using db3 - Invalid argument (22) error: cannot open Providename index using db3 - Invalid argument (22) file /bin/bash is not owned by any package ### notice that creating DB_CONFIG in /tmp causes 'rpm -qf' to fail
This is configuration functionality, not a bug, provided by Berkeley DB. "Don't do that." is the best answer.