extracting rpms to non-root directories

[Chris Jones]

Hi,

I'm trying to extract the contents of an rpm to a non-standard place 
(i.e. non-root) to just get access to the files.

I have in my ~/.rpmmacros

%packager %(echo "$USER")
%_topdir %(echo "$HOME")/rpmbuild

and this seems to do the trick for "src" rpms. ie.

pcdn > rpm -ivh /tmp/arts-1.1.3-2.2.src.rpm
warning: /tmp/arts-1.1.3-2.2.src.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 
db42a60e
    1:arts                   ########################################### 
[100%]

however, I want to extract the devel files, but if I try the same thing 
for this rpm, I get

pcdn > rpm -ivh /tmp/xmms-devel-1.2.7-22.1.p.i386.rpm
warning: /tmp/xmms-devel-1.2.7-22.1.p.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, 
key ID 0c98ff9d
error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm

what do I need to do to just extract the files in the devel rpm ?

cheers Chris