rpm broken?

[Joe]

Hi.  I seem to have broken my rpm somehow.  Probably some inadvertent 
setting of file permissions.   What do I look for?

Joe

[bigbird at localhost installs]$ rpm -i cab*
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
[bigbird at localhost installs]$

[bigbird at localhost installs]$ ls -l /var/lib/rpm
total 34732
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Jan  1 11:43 alternatives/
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      5320704 Feb 17 20:29 Basenames
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        12288 Feb 17 20:29 Conflictname
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1024000 Jan 23 23:37 Dirnames
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      5263360 Jan 23 23:37 Filemd5s
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        28672 Jan 23 23:37 Group
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        24576 Jan 23 23:37 Installtid
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        49152 Feb 17 20:29 Name
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root     24776704 Feb 17 20:29 Packages
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       188416 Feb 17 20:29 Providename
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        69632 Jan 23 23:37 Provideversion
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       245760 Feb 17 20:29 Requirename
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       176128 Jan 23 23:37 Requireversion
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        86016 Jan 23 23:37 Sha1header
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        45056 Jan 23 23:37 Sigmd5
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        12288 Jan 23 23:37 Triggername
[bigbird at localhost installs]$

-- 
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." -- Voltaire