Yast alerts me to new updates that are available. I can download and install all but three: glibc, rpm and java 1_4_2 sun, they will download and installation begins then at about 55%, I get an error message and have to skip installing them. Any ideas as to whats goin on ????

Here is a small portion of the error message: ( There is about four hundred lines like this,,, i'm not kidding ) ....

ERROR(InstTarget:E_RpmDB_subprocess_failed)
rpmdb: PANIC: Invalid argument
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30978) from dbcursor->c_put: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: error(-30978) storing record README.txt into Basenames
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30978) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: error(-30978) getting "TableExample.jar" records from Basenames index
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30978) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: error(-30978) getting "src" records from Basenames index
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30978) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: error(-30978) getting "JDBCAdapter.java" records from Basenames index
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30978) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: error(-30978) getting "OldJTable.java" records from Basenames index

Thanks everyone.....

Maybe your rpm database is corrupt. Try a repair:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/1999/01/ke_rpm-db.html
Don't forget to backup /var/lib/rpm first!

That's seems to have worked like a charm .

So login as root in a shell, then:
cd /var/lib
mv rpm rpm.old (to backup)
rpm rebuilddb

If all is working you might also do a:
rm -rf /var/lib/rpm.old (This wipes out the old dir).

Thanks for the solution!