Installing RPM without RPM

If you get an error like the one below

"error: unrecognized db option: "db3" ignored."

You will need to reinstall rpm as it looks like rpm is damaged. The rpm package only comes in .rpm format so will need to use the rpm2cpio command to install. rpm2cpio can be copied from another machine if you dont have it.

mkdir -p /var/tmp/xxx
cd /var/tmp/xxx
rpm2cpio rpm-4.0.3-1.03.6x.*.rpm | cpio -dim
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} ;
tar cf - ./usr ./etc | (cd /; tar xvf -)

Then do "rpm --rebuilddb" to fix your database.

Last updated: 22/02/2005