I try to install something on a SuSe 8 box, the rpm version is 3.0.6.

However, if I run following command:

rpm -ivh --dbpath /home/mydir/tmp xxx.rpm

It always failed with following error msg:

cannot get exclusive lock on database
error: cannot open /home/mydir/tmp/packages.rpm

Even if I use root, it still fails if I specified --dbpath.

But if I do not specify --dbpath and run the rpm as root, it works.

/home/mydir/tmp is an empty directory I created for the this test. So it's not due to write permission.

Can any one shed a light for me?

"However, if I run following command:

rpm -ivh --dbpath /home/mydir/tmp xxx.rpm

It always failed with following error msg:

cannot get exclusive lock on database
error: cannot open /home/mydir/tmp/packages.rpm"

--dbpath should point to a valid rpm data base. So first you should create a rpm data base. I am not sure, but I think that the command to do that would be:

rpm --initdb /home/mydir/tmp

I suggest that you do not try the --initdb option as root so that you do not accidently destroy your real rpm data base.

See:

man rpm

--------------------------
Steve Stites

I'd like to share with people.

--initdb cannot help.

The tricks are:
1) dbpath should use a directory under local disk
2) The directory has to be created before run rpm. Empty directory is OK.
3) "provides" of spec file cannot work, and have to use --nodeps