RPM / Yum - Fatal Error, run database recovery
Scenario
When running yum clean all, or yum update, you get an error similar to the following;
error: rpmdb: BDB0113 Thread/process #/# failed: BDB1507 Thread died in Berkley DB library
error: db5 error(-30973) from dbenv->failchk BDB0087 DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
CRITICAL:yum.main:
Error: rpmdb open failed
Resolution
Firstly, try clearing the yum cache and then rebuilding it, via;
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/yum/*
sudo yum makecache
If that doesn’t resolve, kill all yum related processes, delete the cache and all metadata, and rebuild;
sudo killall -9 yum
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/yum
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/rpm/__db*
sudo rpm --rebuilddb
sudo yum makecache