yum update segfaulting on transaction test [SOLVED] -- RPM db

[Jonathan Berry]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:15:04 -0600, Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm having a problem trying to use yum update.  I just updated a few
> packages a couple of minutes earlier, now with a few more packages to
> update, it segfaults while running the transaction test.  I'm running
> FC3 x86_64 with everything up to date except for the few packages I'm
> trying to update.  Anyone else having a problem with this?  Attached
[snip]
> 
> Jonathan
> 
[snip]

Okay, well I don't know what caused this, but I was able to fix it. 
Running "rpm --rebuilddb" allowed me to use rpm -Uvh to update all of
the packages.  I would assume this means the yum update would have
also worked (since it basically just wraps rpm at the point of
install).  I should have used yum update so I had a record of it in
/var/log/yum.log, oh well.  I guess something in the previous update
messed up the rpm database.  Any ideas as to what could have caused
the problem?  The previous message has the list of packages that were
updated in the first round.  Also, why will rpm segfault with
something amiss in the database?  I know it's not easy to write
bullet-proof software that is even moderately complex, but still. 
Shouldn't there be checks that could detect something wrong with the
database and tell me "The rpm database has errors, please rebuild it
with 'rpm --rebuilddb'" or even better, it could do that automatically
(or prompt to do it for the paranoid).  Is this something that should
be put into bugzilla?  I might, but the problem is fixed now and I
don't know what went wrong to even begin to try to repeat it.  Any
ideas?

Jonathan