I have had RPM databases become corrupted since RH 4.0. It is not possible to repair these problems, which can prevent package upgrades and installations, and the problems are carried over into OS upgrades. I presently have a RHL 6.1 system running rpm 3.0.3 with a corrupt database, and since I cannot even --rebuilddb I will probably not be able to upgrade this system to the next major version of rpm. On this machine, rpm --rebuilddb (as root) fails with: # rpm --rebuilddb error getting record plhyph.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record pt8hyph.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record sehyph.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record picmore.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record pictex.sty from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record pictexwd.sty from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record prepictex.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record dvipsone.con from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record multido.sty from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record textures.con from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record vtex.con from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record xydvidrv.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record xyps-ps.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record xyps.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record xyv2.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record xyweb.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record story.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record testfont.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record bplain.ini from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record mtplainx.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record mtplus.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record stanacce.tex from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record mktex.opt from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record mktexdir from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm error getting record mktexnam from /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.840/fileindex.rpm cannot add record originally at 11186840 failed to rebuild database; original database remains in place
rpm doesn't report out of disk space.