Have a good start: first» cat /etc/os-release NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed" # VERSION="20181015" ID="opensuse-tumbleweed" ID_LIKE="opensuse suse" VERSION_ID="20181015" first» zypper dup --download-only glibc is zstd-compressed, but the newer rpm that can understand the format requires a newer glibc... it all needs to be unpacked with a second machine to break the cycle. second» sshfs root@first:/ mnt second» cd mnt/var/cache/zypp/packages/base/i586 second» rpm2cpio -diu glibc-2.33-4.1.i586.rpm second» rpm2cpio -diu rpm-4.16.0-4.1.i586.rpm Then, "%__db_backend bdb" needs to be replaced with ndb. The newer rpm is prone to truncate the entire rpm database if it has to do any writes and that value is still on bdb. (Found out the hard way, but luckily I had /var/adm/backup/rpmdb) first» vi /usr/lib/rpm/macros <<Replace %__db_backend bdb with %__db_backend ndb>> first» cd /var/cache/zypp/packages/base/i586 first» ./lib/ld-linux.so.2 --library-path $PWD/lib:$PWD/usr/lib \ ./usr/bin/rpmdb --rebuilddb Using the unmanaged rpm, install the managed rpm & glibc (and possibly zypper too). first» ./lib/ld-linux.so.2 --library-path $PWD/lib:$PWD/usr/lib \ ./bin/rpm -Uhv glibc-2.33-4.1.i586.rpm \ glibc-locale-base-2.33-4.1.i586.rpm glibc-locale-2.33-4.1.i586.rpm \ rpm-4.16.0-4.1.i586.rpm (may need to add a few more, like liblua5_4, libselinux1, libsolv-tools, libzypp, zypper, ..) Once done, both rpm and glibc are new and it's back to standard business: first» zypper dup The following product is going to be upgraded: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20181015-0 -> 20210311-0 first» rm -rf /var/cache/zypp/packages