Update: Install was painless simple selecting of packages that wanted to install. However my internet connection was playing up which meant that it hung whilst trying to download packages from the net. Currently installing the nvidia packages from rpmfusion.

Update Everything is up and running and I have restored all my data back on. A few problems and annoyances. There is a problem with the non-free nvidia driver. The only other annoyance is the System -> Preferences menu is not split into further sub menus which creates a menu that doesn’t fit on my screen. I have yet to have a proper play with everything else but so far it all looks good.

rpmdb: Thread/process 4348/3087935168 failed: Thread died in Berkeley DB library
error: db4 error(-30975) from dbenv->failchk: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 -  (-30975)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in 
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 229, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 84, in main
    base.getOptionsConfig(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 184, in getOptionsConfig
    enabled_plugins=self.optparser._splitArg(opts.enableplugins))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 192, in _getConfig
    self._conf = config.readMainConfig(startupconf)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 774, in readMainConfig
    yumvars['releasever'] = _getsysver(startupconf.installroot, startupconf.distroverpkg)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 844, in _getsysver
    idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', distroverpkg)
TypeError: rpmdb open failed

After a quick search I found a solution. Deleting the __db.* files in /var/lib/rpm fixes it

$ sudo rm /var/lib/rpm/__db.*