Comment 2 for bug 1069350

Output of rpm -v --showrc | grep rpmdb:
-14: _dbpath %(echo $HOME/.rpmdb)

Output of rgrep '\.rpmdb' alien* rpm* (in current sources):
rpm-4.9.1.1/debian/rpm.README.Debian: cd ~/.rpmdb
rpm-4.9.1.1/debian/patches/rpmdb-in-home.patch:+%_dbpath %(echo $HOME/.rpmdb)
rpm-4.9.1.1/debian/rpm.NEWS: each user, own database in ~/.rpmdb will be created. This avoids errors while
rpm-4.9.1.1/.pc/fix-directories.patch/macros.in:%_dbpath %(echo $HOME/.rpmdb)
rpm-4.9.1.1/macros.in:%_dbpath %(echo $HOME/.rpmdb)

I assume it's the line with $HOME/.rpmdb. Maybe sometimes an rpm command is invoked with the envvar HOME not set, if invoked over sudo, dpkg, alien (or any package using alien) or whatever. In this case "$HOME/.rpmdb" equals "/.rpmdb". Maybe we should include a test of the environment variable before using it.