Problem with yum database

[JD]

I had invoked
sudo yum -y update

only to realize that I had to fix a repo file before doing the update.
So, I killed the process from another gnome terminal, fixed
the file and retried to update. Now the database is hosed.
I tried to do clean all, and it also fails the same way:

$ sudo yum clean all
rpmdb: Thread/process 7604/3079239360 failed: Thread died in Berkeley DB 
library
error: db3 error(-30974) from dbenv->failchk: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal 
error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 -  (-30974)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in <module>
     yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
   File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 254, in user_main
     errcode = main(args)
   File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 88, in main
     base.getOptionsConfig(args)
   File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 191, in getOptionsConfig
     self.conf
   File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 778, in 
<lambda>
     conf = property(fget=lambda self: self._getConfig(),
   File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 255, in 
_getConfig
     startupconf = config.readStartupConfig(fn, root)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 834, in 
readStartupConfig
     startupconf.releasever = _getsysver(startupconf.installroot, 
startupconf.distroverpkg)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 944, in 
_getsysver
     idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', distroverpkg)
_rpm.error: rpmdb open failed


What to do now??