Last night I reinstalled Fedora Core 3 because I wanted to get a few things done with it...now I'm having problems with yum update. I had 237 updates right off the bat so I just ran yum update and let it go....this morning I woke up and there were 63 left and all the text was in symbols....this is the current message I am getting

[root@me0912 jrub]# yum update
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30978) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - (-30978)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/yum", line 8, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 51, in main
base.getOptionsConfig(args)
File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 133, in getOptionsConfig
self.conf = yumconf(configfile = yumconffile, root=root)
File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 196, in __init__
self.yumvar['releasever'] = self._getsysver()
File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 263, in _getsysver idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', self.getConfigOption('distroverpkg'))
TypeError: rpmdb open failed


Right when I set up yum I did the following

rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

Because it said that I needed a public key and http://install.lon-capa.org/FC3_install.html said to use that one.

I also need to know how to get the yum.conf working right so I can download and install other programs such as mplayer and kaffeine....

THANK YOU
djljjm

you might want to check out the yum extender

http://fedoranews.org/tchung/yumex/
gui for yum

can't help you with your errors, I'm pretty new to yum myself.
mine is working fine though, even with the gpgchecks activated.

i pretty much used the yum.conf file recommended through fedora support.There's lots of examples of yum.conf on the net you can just cut and paste from if you like. I think I got mplayer from the dag repository. I can email you my yum.conf later if you like and send you a couple of links for searching repositories for software.
Cheers

I also get a TypeError when using yum extender to intall any packages.
PyXML-0.8.3-6.i386.rpm 100% |=========================| 91 kB 00:00
---> Package PyXML.i386 0:0.8.3-6 set to be updated
--> Running transaction check
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "yumex.py", line 74, in on_button
File "yumex.py", line 405, in install_packages
File "yumex.py", line 313, in get_confimation
File "yumex.py", line 327, in get_package_list
TypeError: unpack non-sequence