Why does zmd fail to load on Suse/Novell/Opensuse Linux?

Well, it finally happened to me: zmd fails to load.

I’ve read about it, but it’s like when you read about those “other” people that suffered through hurricanes or earthquakes, you never think it will happen to *you*. Not that having zmd fail to load is *anywhere* near the level of consequence as those things… I mean only the remoteness of it… anyway, on to the story…

I can’t remember what caused it, since it happened more than… well… a few minutes ago. Anyway, I did something to cause my zmd database to get corrupt on my Opensuse 10.1 server, and now the zmd daemon won’t load and run. I know, I know… right now you’re rolling your eyes, thinking, “upgrade to 10.3” (at the time of this writing)… Whatever… Anyway…

This is a simple fix and I’ll cut to the chase on how to get it done, making it easy as possible. Do this:

  1. Rename /var/lib/zmd.db to /var/lib/zmd.db.old
  2. If present (it may or may not be there), rename /var/lib/zmd.db-journal to /var/lib/zmd.db-journal.old
  3. Reboot the server (or restart zmd)

Upon rebooting, the daemon will reconnect to the configured sources and rebuild the database. Of course, if the database got screwed up while you were making changes in the first place, you just might want to walk through all your zmd-related settings to validate them. Heck, you might want to do that anyway just to be safe…

On another note, if your rpm database goes corrupt, you can do a similar fix:

rm /var/lib/rpm/__db.000 (or similar)
rpm --rebuilddb

…then reboot. You might want to just add a package from grins… something trivial… just to test the db.

🙂

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *