Hmm...I can't guarantee this wouldn't have undesirable effects but deleting the transient /var/lib/rpm/__db* files may do the trick. When my cron.daily RPM job occasionally hung, deleting these transient files was the only way I could access the RPM database without rebooting. Although this might not be the exact problem, this URL might explain a bit more: http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/87/2001/8/50/6439387/ Good luck! Brandon On Friday 30 November 2001 12:08 pm, you wrote: > I was removing some RPMs using rpm -e [package] and the process > appeared to hang. After many minutes of waiting, I attempted to kill it, > with no success. And I cannot do any other rpm commands until it's > done/killed. What can I do? > > [root at walleye atanner]# ps -ef | grep rpm > root 5863 5836 0 11:47 ? 00:00:00 rpm -e apmd autofs > xisdnload isdroot 5971 5906 0 12:03 ttyp2 00:00:00 grep rpm > [root at walleye atanner]# kill -9 5863 > [root at walleye atanner]# ps -ef | grep rpm > root 5863 5836 0 11:47 ? 00:00:00 rpm -e apmd autofs > xisdnload isdroot 5974 5906 0 12:08 ttyp2 00:00:00 grep rpm > [root at walleye atanner]# rpm -q apmd > error: cannot get shared lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages > error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1) > > thanks.