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rpmdb: Lock table is out of available locker entries

If while using ‘yum’ or ‘rpm’ you receive the following error:

rpmdb: Lock table is out of available locker entries

Your RPM dB files are screwed up… here is how you unscrew them!

This error tell you the Berkley database files which RPM uses are damaged and in order to clear the error you must rebuild the Berkley dB files from scratch.

Here is how you fix this error:

  1. Make a backup of your current files
  2. Remove the damaged files
  3. Rebuild your RPM Berkley dB files
  4. Use yum again

Here is the command walk through:

  1. As root, execute this:
    cd /root; tar cvzf rpm-backup.tar.gz /var/lib/rpm
  2. Remove the Berkeley dB files which yum and rpm use:
    rm /var/lib/rpm/__db.00*
  3. Instruct rpm to rebuild the databases files:
    ```bash rpm --rebuilddb ```
  4. Test your yum command again:
    yum install somepackage
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