RPM update ???

[Kris Murphy <kris main nc us>]

Dear Linux gurus:

I am fairly knowledgeable about Linux as a user, and know Windows well, but 
I'm trying to increase my skills to a higher level, thus attempting things 
never before done (by me). I keep running into weird problems trying to 
update the Redhat 6.2 install on a test box to use the new RPM database 
format, which seems universally recommended despite the near-total lack of 
good information available on how to proceed. I supposedly need to do this 
to install other things (like Bastille and the new kernel). Has anybody 
actually succeeded at this?

Here's my error message (running as root) after finally (many attempts 
later) updating glibc to 2.1.3-22:

rpm -Uvh rpm-3.0.6-6x.i386.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
        glibc >= 2.1.3 conflicts with rpm-3.0.6-6x

Am I in a Catch-22 here? You can't update A because B is already too 
advanced, and you can't remove B because it's required to do any updating? 
I tried skipping this one and going on to:

rpm -Uvh rpm-python-3.0.6-6x.i386.rpm
rpm-python                  ##################################################

Success, right? Also got this one to go:

rpm -Uvh popt-1.5-7.6x.i386.rpm
popt                        ##################################################

Moving along! So now:

rpm -Uvh rpm-build-3.0.6-6x.i386.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
        rpm = 3.0.6 is needed by rpm-build-3.0.6-6x

Try again:

rpm -Uvh rpm-3.0-6.0.i386.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
        librpm.so.0 is needed by rpm-build-3.0.4-0.48
        librpm.so.0 is needed by rpm-python-3.0.6-6x
        librpmbuild.so.0 is needed by rpm-build-3.0.4-0.48

At least the python upgrade shows up - I thought the RPM process was 
supposed simplify and automate things! Anybody got an answer out there?

-Kris