rpm broken?

[Cyber Source]

You were trying to run rpm as a user. Users do not have permissions to 
the rpm database and it's functions. Do it as root.

Joe wrote:

> 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]$
>