Whenever I try to do a rpm command I get this message:

Anyone know how to fix it?

Try this as root:
1) kill any rpm proccesses:
killall rpm
2) Rebuild the rpm database
rpm --rebuilddb

Didn't work.

rpm: no process killed
rpmdb: unable to join the environment
error: db4 error(11) from dbenv->open: Resource temporarily unavailable
error: cannot open Packages index

Somebody needs to write a Kernel compile howto with instructions to solve this problem, which happens to almost everybody.

What I did was upgrade rpm to the newest version. But then when I went back to my working 2.4 kernel the new rpm didn't work and I was screwed.

When running 2.6.x, try prefixing any rpm command with "LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1" like "LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 rpm -ivH adore" or exporting the var like "export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1" before doing rpm ops.

If that works please post it works.

try this as soon as i can ..

Thought I'd let you know that the described solution worked for me:

problem:
[root@ root]# rpm --rebuilddb
rpmdb: unable to join the environment
error: db4 error(11) from dbenv->open: Resource temporarily unavailable
error: cannot open Packages index

solution:
[root@ root]# export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1

verification:
[root@ root]# rpm --rebuilddb
[root@ root]#

My environment is a RH9.0 that I did an "yum upgrade kernel" on. After rebooting to the new kernel, rpm failed when I tried to complete the upgrade to Fedora Core 3:

[root@ root]# yum upgrade
rpmdb: unable to join the environment
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
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/yum", line 60, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
File "yummain.py", line 123, in main
File "yummain.py", line 70, in parseCmdArgs
File "config.py", line 126, in __init__
File "config.py", line 249, in _getsysver
TypeError: rpmdb open failed
[root@ root]#