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Description of problem:
There are a number of bugs ( beginning with 73097, continuing in 75647, 77562,
and most recently in 83236) which describe rpm hangs/lockups.  As far as I can
tell, the specific status quo is as follows:

4.1-1.06 will hang seemingly at random, requiring a SIGKILL.  This leaves stale
locks in __db.*, which must be then deleted before trying rpm again.

4.1-9 and 4.1.1 are reported to fix the missed SIGCHLD problem, however bug
#77562 reports a "difficult to reproduce" hang in 4.1-9.  My (undocumented)
experience corraborates this.

jbj is quoted on www.rpm.org/errata/ as writing:

... Yes, there was a missed SIGCHLD in rpm-4.1 that "hangs" rpm. Most of the
rest of the problems I'm hearing and seeing have to do with "kill -9" and other
exceptional events. The rules have changed: ATM it's up to the user to clean up
after "kill -9". Yes, the change in rules is messy and confusing. -- Jeff
Johnson, rpm-list hosted at Red Hat, 26 Nov 2002

It is unclear to me what version of rpm (i.e. 4.1-1.0.6 || 4.1-9 || 4.1.1) is
unable to automagically cleanup its stale locks in __db.*  

#75647 is largely unremarkable except for the closing remark by jbj
that there's "Errata coming".  I don't see anything in the RH8 Errata about this
issue.  Hence the basis for my bugreport.

What, please, is the current status quo (documented or otherwise) regarding this?  

<sob story> I need to be able to trust that an automated, unattended,
unsupervised rpm install will reliably exit with SOME status (error||success);
manually detecting and cleaning-up-after an rpm hang is unacceptable in my
situation. </sob story>

I'd very much like to see the Errata which jbj referred to as
"forthcoming" and a clarification of what the current status of this "hanging
rpm/lock cleanup" issue is in the current (4.1-9 && 4.1.1) versions of rpm. 
Especially considering the proliferation of multiple-issue bug reports, a clear
statement of the situation would be very very helpful.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
4.1-9, 4.1.1

How reproducible:
Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Google web and newsgroups for any of "rpm 4.1-0.6 4.1-9 4.1.1 hang SIGCHLD"
2.  search bugzilla.redhat.com for similar terms
3.  search rpm.org, redhat.com for similar terms

Actual Results:  Head starts to hurt, version numbers become impossible to
differentiate, automated rpm installs still behave unpredictably, current 
state-of-affairs still muddy.

Additional info: