Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 169145
rpm - a nasty database corruption incident
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:14 EST
Description of problem: While attempting to install the latest kernel from updates rpm refused to cooperate with the following error messages: rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery error: db4 error(-30977) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - (-30977) error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm The first attempt to 'rpm --rebuilddb' resulted in the same error as above. The second attempt destroyed the whole database leaving in it two random packages. In a retrospect "run recovery" probably meant something else although it is not that clear what. 'db_dump' followed by 'db_load'? Luckily a pretty recent backup was available and after restoring /var/lib/rpm/ the whole system was brought back into a consistent state. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): rpm-4.4.1-22 How reproducible: Hopefuly not often.
What was the initial system state? What packages were in the upgrade transaction?
> What was the initial system state? You mean what was installed? Everything was updated to the current available level at that time. My logs show that on Sept-22, before I got hit by that error the following packages were installed: man-pages.noarch 1.67-8 xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-Mesa-libGLU.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-deprecated-libs-devel.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-deprecated-libs.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-devel.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-font-utils.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-libs.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-tools.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-twm.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-xauth.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-xdm.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11-xfs.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 xorg-x11.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2 > What packages were in the upgrade transaction? Again from what I see in my logs these were, the next day, shadow-utils.i386 2:4.0.12-4.FC4 kernel.i686 2.6.12-1.1456_FC4 and the problem struck during a new kernel installation. After that I restored rpm databases from a backup, resynchronized with the real state of the system and so far, knock-on-the-wood, everything in that area works fine. 'shadow-utils' package in the meantime got replaced with 4.0.12-5.FC4 and kernel is also not the same (2.6.13-1.1532_FC4 at this moment). Both rpm, 4.4.1-22, and db4, 4.3.27-3, are still the same as at the time of that trouble.
This problem is unlikely to be reproducible. A fix is exactly as likely as a reproducer.
> This problem is unlikely to be reproducible. I think so too. The main reason behind this report was that maybe somebody have seen something similar. I would actually suspect some rare gotchas in an underlying database.
Closing out. If you get a reproducible case please reopen.