I was trying to install CentOS under a Debian 3.1 Xen dom0 by following these instructions.

I ran into a bit of trouble at one of the earlier steps:

lime:~# rpmdb --initdb
rpmdb: unable to initialize mutex: Function not implemented
rpmdb: /var/lib/rpm/__db.001: unable to initialize environment lock: Function not implemented
error: db4 error(38) from dbenv->open: Function not implemented
rpm: To install rpm packages on Debian systems, use alien. See README.Debian.
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Function not implemented (38)

Searching Google revealed other people having the same problem but not finding a solution.
I finally got it to work by upgrading some packages and installing others. I'm not sure exactly which one fixed it.

Here is what I did:
Installed the following packages from Debian Unstable:

libc6_2.3.6-7_i386.deb       libselinux1_1.30-1_i386.deb    locales_2.3.6-7_all.deb
libc6-dev_2.3.6-7_i386.deb   libsepol1_1.12-1_i386.deb      rpm_4.4.1-8_i386.deb
libc6-i686_2.3.6-7_i386.deb  libssl0.9.8_0.9.8b-1_i386.deb  tzdata_2006c-2_all.deb

Installed the following packages from Debian Stable along with their automatic dependencies:

alien lsb-rpm lintian dh-make cvs gettext-doc build-essential binutils-multiarch

¶ 3:42 PM