… so I am installing some ancient linux (redhat 9) on some similar ancient hardware (don’t ask).
All goes well. Suddenly the install hangs. I follow the instructions to get rid of __db.* in /var/lib/rpm and do a rpm –rebuilddb only to get an error message:
error: db4 error(16) from dbenv->remove: Device or resource busy
Too me that sounds like something is broken. Tried it again, and it behaved the very same way. Since nothing is running on the machine I decided to reboot. Still the same error. Finally, I google for it, and find that this is ‘harmless’. “harmless” ? OK, why dosen’t the error message say so then?? This is just plain stupid. It would have taken the original coder 3 minutes to give people a little hint that this error is well, not an error. That it is ‘harmless’.