Why does yum panic with "rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery" when updating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ?

Issue

• Why does yum panic with "rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery" when updating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ?

> $ yum update  
> ...  
> Installing     : keyutils                                              82/588  
> Updating       : cpp                                                   83/588  
> Updating       : vim-enhanced                                          84/588  
> Updating       : iptables-ipv6                                         85/588  
> Updating       : tomcat5-jsp-2.0-api                                   86/588groupadd: GID 16 is not unique  
> useradd: invalid numeric argument 'oprofile'  
> Updating       : oprofile                                              87/588  
> Updating       : evince                                                88/588  
> Updating       : gdb                                                   89/588  
> Updating       : xorg-x11-server-Xvfb                                  90/588  
> Updating       : xorg-x11-server-Xnest                                 91/588  
> Updating       : mlocate                                               92/588  
> warning: /etc/updatedb.conf created as /etc/updatedb.conf.rpmnew  
> Updating       : gnome-session                                         93/588  
> Updating       : nss-tools                                             94/588rpmdb: PANIC: Invalid argument  
> rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery  
> rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery  
> rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery  
> rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery  
> rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery