Red Hat Knowledgebase

The RPM database consists of all files located in /var/lib/rpm.

Usually the only time you will need to access this directory is when you have problems pertaining to up2date freezing or package name/version conflicts.

The quickest and most common way to resolve these issues mentioned above is to remove the __db.001, __db.002, __db.003 files and run the following command:

 
# rpm --rebuilddb

This will rebuild the RPM database and recreate the necessary files, therefore, allowing you to successfully run up2date and receive your package updates again.