diff --git a/lib/rpmlock.cc b/lib/rpmlock.cc
index 6335f81e0f..498e03fcec 100644
--- a/lib/rpmlock.cc
+++ b/lib/rpmlock.cc
@@ -34,6 +34,10 @@ static rpmlock rpmlock_new(const char *lock_path, const char *descr)
 	if (lock->fd == -1) {
 	    if (errno == EACCES)
 		lock->fd = open(lock_path, O_RDONLY);
+	    else if (errno == EROFS) {
+		/* read-only media doesn't need locks, just feed it something */
+		lock->fd = dup(STDIN_FILENO);
+	    }
 	    if (lock->fd == -1) {
 		delete lock;
 		lock = NULL;
diff --git a/tests/data/misc/rpmdb.sqlite b/tests/data/misc/rpmdb.sqlite
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..9129728413
Binary files /dev/null and b/tests/data/misc/rpmdb.sqlite differ
diff --git a/tests/rpmdb.at b/tests/rpmdb.at
index c4cb947804..424a1271bd 100644
--- a/tests/rpmdb.at
+++ b/tests/rpmdb.at
@@ -81,6 +81,15 @@ RPMTEST_CLEANUP
 AT_SETUP([rpmdb --export and --import])
 AT_KEYWORDS([rpmdb])
 
+# This needs to run *without* RPMDB_INIT to test behavior on read-only mount
+RPMTEST_CHECK([
+run rpmdb --exportdb --dbpath ${RPMTEST}/data/misc/ > rdonly.list
+test -s rdonly.list
+],
+[0],
+[],
+[])
+
 RPMTEST_CHECK([
 RPMDB_INIT
 runroot rpm -U /data/RPMS/hlinktest-1.0-1.noarch.rpm