On Wednesday 02 November 2005 08:49 am, Paul wrote:

hi,

...

...

Tonight I went to install the package sharutils from the 9.2 disks. It would not install and gave me the following error. I have no idea what it means. Anybody can explain/rectify this???

----------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ERROR(InstTarget:E_RpmDB_subprocess_failed) --- error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1) error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Thanks for any help/guidance.

Adam,

I was root. You have to be root to install software with Yast.

Bob S.

There should be more messages in the file /var/log/YaST2/y2log which may shed more light on the problem, for example the rpm database is corrupt and needs rebuilding.

Also check the permissions of the directory /var/lib/rpm (ls -ld) and the files contained within it (ls -l). Root should be able to read/write these files.

Paul, The y2log is a huge file so I chose an excerpt which appears to be pertinent. From looking at that it seems that yast could not get a lock on that directory. Why ??? Here is the excerpt" -------------------------------------------------- RpmDb::installPackage(/var/adm/YaST/InstSrcManager/IS_CACHE_0x00000001/MEDIA/suse/x86_64/sharutils-4.2c-721.x86_64.rpm,156) 2005-10-31 21:56:31 <1> EasyStreet(7757) [liby2util++] ExternalProgram.cc(start_program):163 Executing 'rpm' '--root' '/' '--dbpath' '/var/lib/rpm' '-U' '--percent' '--nosignature' '--force' '--nodeps' '--ignoresize' '/var/adm/YaST/InstSrcManager/IS_CACHE_0x00000001/MEDIA/suse/x86_64/sharutils-4.2c-721.x86_64.rpm' 2005-10-31 21:59:35 <1> EasyStreet(7757) [liby2util++] ExternalProgram.cc(checkStatus):322 pid 7773 exited with status 1 2005-10-31 21:59:35 <3> EasyStreet(7757) [rpmdb] RpmDb.cc(installPackage):1637 rpm failed, message was: warning: waiting for exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages 2005-10-31 21:59:35 <3> EasyStreet(7757) [rpmdb] RpmDb.cc(installPackage):1637 error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages 2005-10-31 21:59:35 <3> EasyStreet(7757) [rpmdb] RpmDb.cc(installPackage):1637 error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1) 2005-10-31 21:59:35 <3> EasyStreet(7757) [rpmdb] RpmDb.cc(installPackage):1637 error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm 2005-10-31 21:59:35 <3> EasyStreet(7757) [rpmdb] RpmDb.cc(installPackage):1637 2005-10-31 22:01:13 <1> EasyStreet(7757) [YCP] PackageCallbacks.ycp:283 DonePackage `abort ----------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Bob S.