[lug] rpm DB intiializing for non-root

[D. Stimits]

In order to allow experimenting with rpm's by a non-root user, I have 
added some regular user .rpmmacros lines, and created directories to 
accept files that parallel the root versions. The following is what I 
had until now, which let me do source rpm rebuilds by a non-root user 
"foo", but will not let me do package building by "foo" to the alternate 
directories:
%_topdir  /home/foo/rpm
%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp

Then I have in /home/foo:
rpm
rpm/BUILD/
rpm/SOURCES/
rpm/SPECS/
rpm/SRPMS/
rpm/tmp/
rpm/RPMS/
rpm/RPMS/athlon/
rpm/RPMS/i386/
rpm/RPMS/i486/
rpm/RPMS/i586/
rpm/RPMS/i686/
rpm/RPMS/noarch/

I can rebuild rpms quite well from that. However, I'm dabbling with 
taking an existing source rpm, with an inadequate spec file (it doesn't 
use the right autoconf --configure type arguments, so I am customizing 
the autoconf configure arguments), and creating a new source rpm from 
that, based on the modified spec file.

First, I found I wanted to have a fake/alternate rpm DB that non-root 
can go to, so I expanded the .rpmmacros file to become:
%_topdir  /home/foo/rpm
%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp
%_dbpath %{_topdir}/db

...then I added directory:
~/rpm/db/

...and ran:
rpm --initdb

All of this looks good so far. But when I start to do any rpm -b type 
command based on the spec file, it complains about some of the other 
files in the db directory that are missing (in reality I can issue 
nodeps, and get it to build, but it indicates that the dependency 
mechanism uses those other db3 files, I would like dependencies to work):
Providename, Name, Conflictname

(all of these and more exist in the real rpm db directory /var/lib/rpm/)

Now my question is, since --initdb and --rebuilddb do not add these 
files, and since blank versions created by touch will not work (even 
after a new initdb or rebuilddb), is there a standard mechanism to 
create these for my non-root user? Can they be built with an rpm 
command? All I need is a cheap and empty rpm DB for non-root, perhaps 
I'll test install relocateable rpm's into the non-root user's home 
directory area.

D. Stimits, stimits AT idcomm.com