rpm --rebuilddb error?

[Johnson, Shaunn]

Howdy:

Running RHEL 3.0 on an intel box.  I was trying to look 
for some info with rpm and I got a permission denied
error.  I decided to run 'rpm --rebuilddb' and I got this
when I tried to do 'rpm -qa php'  (or whatever else):

[snip]
rpmdb: /var/lib/rpm/__db.003: Permission denied
rpmdb: PANIC: Permission denied
error: db4 error(-30982) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run
database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 -  (-30982)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
no packages
[/snip]

But on a separate terminal, I can get results again.

The only messages I'm seeing in the /var/log/messages 
file are:

[snip]
Aug 11 10:22:12 test_serv kernel: application bug: 
webcached(28020) has SIGCHLD set to SIG_IGN but calls wait().

Aug 11 10:22:12 test_serv kernel: 
(see the NOTES section of 'man 2 wait'). Workaround activated.

Aug 11 10:22:16 test_serv pam_timestamp_check: 
pam_timestamp: `/var/' permissions are lax
[/snip]

Why is this?

Thanks!

-X