Re: odd db4 error with 2.5.69-mm4 [was Re: Huraaa for 2.5]

Matti Aarnio
2003-05-14T07:26:15Z

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 08:52:41PM -0500, Shawn wrote:
> Not to get away from the praise too much, but I have a rpm/db4 problem
> that seems to be related to the kernel. before I started backing out
> parts of 69-mm4, I just wanted to figure out /which/ parts to try
> backing out.
>
> As root, I basically can't use rpm at all. I think it's select() related
> as strace shows it timing out. The odd thing is that it works great as a
> non-privileged user.
>
> 2.5.69-mm4, otherwise mostly stock rh90 setup.
>
> [root@www root]# rpm -qi iptables
> rpmdb: unable to join the environment
.....

Rgr.. That is the key. You are seeing the same thing
as I have, and which is entered several times into the
RH Bugzilla.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=86381
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88178

> error: db4 error(11) from dbenv->open: Resource temporarily unavailable
> error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Resource temporarily
> unavailable (11)
> error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
> package iptables is not installed
> [root@www root]#
....

The chain of the events (and my first encountering of the problem
was on 2.4.18 kernel) is:

RPM calls db4 environment open, which calls pthreads-mutex
initialization, which fails...

From: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=86381
------- Additional Comment #2 From Joe Orton on 2003-04-27 04:52 -------
This looks similar to bug 88178: I think the problem is that DB4 is
configured to use pthread mutexes in Shrike, but this depends on
pthread_mutexattr_setpshared working. But it seems
pthread_mutexattr_setpshared only works with an NPTL-savvy kernel,
so DB4 doesn't work right of booting an old (or non-NPTL) kernel.

What might be that "NPTL-savvy" kernel ?
If your 2.5.69-mm4 isn't, it must be RH specific ?

/Matti Aarnio