# 4.8 Installing the RPMs with SuSe's YaST makes the rpm database unusable. What can I do?

If you do get

        error -2 reading header: Unknown error

you have to update rpm:

     rpm -U ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse_update/suse51/rpm/rpm.rpm

and you should also update YaST

     rpm -U ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse_update/suse51/a1/yast.rpm

The packages were built using rpm-2.4.12 and cannot be installed by some old versions of rpm. this mostly happens to SuSe Linux users. Version 5.0 of their distribution ships with rpm-2.4.1

You can find out which version your rpm is with:

     rpm -qi rpm