E.g. cron is well known to not set $HOME by default: I'd agree that the root cause
for creating non-FHS /.rpmdb is due to $HOME not being set (and RPM patched
to use $HOME in essential/mandatory configuration like %_dbpath).
These issues are in a Debian patch to RPM and needs to be addressed within Debian/uBuntu.
If you wish rpm-4.9.1 "upstream" patched, then you need to use trac at http://rpm.org.
E.g. cron is well known to not set $HOME by default: I'd agree that the root cause
for creating non-FHS /.rpmdb is due to $HOME not being set (and RPM patched
to use $HOME in essential/mandatory configuration like %_dbpath).
These issues are in a Debian patch to RPM and needs to be addressed within Debian/uBuntu.
If you wish rpm-4.9.1 "upstream" patched, then you need to use trac at http:// rpm.org.