How to verify the RPM database?

Question

I need to verify that the RPM database (not an RPM, the database in /var/lib/rpm) is not corrupt or inconsistent, in a manner suitable for scripting (i.e. will return exit code 0 if good and something else if corrupt). I can use db_verify to verify the individual Berkeley databases, but suppose the individual Berkeley databases are totally valid and the inconsistency is across databases. I experimented by deleting (renaming) a database, and rpm -qa --dump was oblivious and rpm -Va just regenerated it with a warning. I suppose I could look for the string "warning:" in the output, but that seems unreliable. Besides I don't really want to verify the files, I want to verify the database. I've searched for OpenSuSE RPM-related packages and found nothing apropos. Any suggestions? I'd prefer something designed to do a thorough verification as opposed to just a dump.

Answer 1

There's an undocumented --verifydb flag that's been around since at least rpm-4.1.

See rpm/rpmdb.c:

{ "verifydb", '\0', (POPT_ARG_VAL|POPT_ARGFLAG_OR|POPT_ARGFLAG_DOC_HIDDEN),
    &mode, MODE_VERIFYDB, N_("verify database files"), NULL},

So rpm --verifydb should do exactly what you're looking for.