rpm db rebuild question

[t.littlefield at comcast.net]

Sorry for the poorly formatted message earlier...  (Stupid
Comcast Webmail, partially my fault for not using a
fixed font...)

Thanks for the suggestions.  I have an older machine that
I can turn into a similar system and copy the files over.  I
hadn't thought of that one.

Backups?  Who needs backups?  Linux just runs... usually.
Hmm... might be a wise idea to have a cron job tar those
up every now and again.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

- Todd

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com>
> On Monday 12 November 2007 01:58:43 pm t.littlefield at comcast.net wrote:
> [...]
> > This caused all sorts of havoc, from corrupted mythconverg tables to the
> > previously mentioned RPM problems.  I was able to recover the db problems
> > after some digging.  The only thing I have found for RPM is to run
> >
> > rpm --reubuilddb
> >
> > Which does run...  the end result is 121 packages in the db.  One of the
> > files --rebuilddb pulls from appears to have gotten pooched. (Packages
> > perhaps, don't remember which one).  In any event, I can no longer do a yum
> > update on the system.
> >
> > The only solution I can think of is to:
> >
> > - stop mythtv
> > - perform a mysql dump
> > - backup the config files
> > - reinstall FC6 and mythtv
> > - yum update
> > - restore the mysql db
> >
> > I've got too many shows backlogged on disk to start clean (although they
> > are on a separate file system).  If anyone on the list can supply a little
> > rpm black magic to recover the packages that are installed, I would be most
> > appreciative.  :-)
> 
> So far as I know, if nuking /var/lib/rpm/__db.* and running 'rpm --rebuilddb' 
> doesn't do the trick, you're probably SOL. I've only ever managed to corrupt 
> an rpm database that badly once in my life (circa Red Hat Linux 9, iirc), and 
> lucky me, I had a very similar system nearby that I just copied the rpmdb 
> from, which was 'close enough' until that system was decommissioned.
> 
> Another idea... If you have a good idea of what packages were actually 
> installed, you can try "reinstalling" all of said packages. /root/install.log 
> gives at least a list of what was initially installed, and you may be able to 
> glean most other bits of info from /var/log/messages* if you 
> installed/updated other packages using yum (at least, I think yum logged that 
> stuff in FC6). So basically, parse logs, then for package in packages, yum -y 
> install package.
> 
> -- 
> Jarod Wilson
> jarod at wilsonet.com
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