cPanel Error: rpmdb open failed – How to resolve quickly

We often come across the cPanel Error: rpmdb open failed while updating yum on VPS with cPanel on it.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several cPanel queries.

Today, let us see what causes this error and how we can fix it.

cPanel Error: rpmdb open failed

cPanel facilitates and makes web hosting easy for website administrators. In this article, let us discuss how to resolve a cPanel error.

Generally, while updating yum on VPS with cPanel on it, we may run into the error:

rpmdb: Thread/process 29586/140397819602848 failed: Thread died in Berkeley DB library
error: db3 error(-30974) from dbenv->failchk: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 – (-30974)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
CRITICAL:yum.main:

Error: rpmdb open failed

This error occurs when the rpm database is corrupted on the system.

How to fix this error?

Moving ahead, let us see how our Support Engineers fix this error for our customers.

To do so, one possible and common method is via Commandline.

1. Initially, we log in to the machine using the root account where we face the issue.
2. Then we stash all the headers files on which yum uses for dependency resolution:

   yum clean headers

3. Clean yum packages cache:

   yum clean packages

4. Then we clean metadata:

   yum clean metadata

5. Clean dbcache:

   yum clean dbcache

6. Clean remaining things:

   yum clean all

7. Remove clean all RPM database files:

   rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db.*

8. Rebuilt RPM Database:

   rpm -vv –rebuilddb

9. Finally, we run the update command:

   yum update

In order to resolve this issue, we can also attempt a rebuild of the RPM database using the Rebuild RPM Database tool:

“WHM Home » Software » Rebuild RPM Database”

[Need help with the fix? We’d be happy to assist]

Conclusion

To conclude, we run into the cPanel Error while updating yum on VPS with cPanel on it. Today, we saw how our Support Techs fix the same for our customers in easy and effective methods.