Shouldn't "rpm -e --justdb ..." just work on the db and not look around in the fs? Strace shows a lot of stat64 calls - both on files belonging to packages being erased from the db and on files belonging to packages that are being kept.
stat64's are needed for fingerprint calculation, necessary to compute filestate tag before adding to the database (even with --justdb).
> ... before adding to the database ... But that's my point - I was not *adding* anything - this was a -e!
stats are needed for fingerprints on erase too.