[exim] problem with exim_dbmbuild

I am running exim_dbmbuild and getting the following error:
exim_dbmbuild /etc/aliases /tmp/aliases.db
exim_dbmbuild: unable to create /tmp/aliases.db.dbmbuild_temp: Success

ls -l shows the following:
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root exim 14594 2005-01-11 11:41 /usr/exim/bin/exim_dbmbuild

ldd /usr/exim/bin/exim_dbmbuild shows:
         linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
         libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0x40022000)
         libcrypt.so.1 => /lib/libcrypt.so.1 (0x40037000)
         libdb-4.0.so => /usr/lib/libdb-4.0.so (0x40068000)
         libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x4010c000)
         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

The platform is SuSE 9.1
and exim version is 4.43.

Also in the make file, I have:
USE_DB=yes
DBMLIB=-L/usr/lib -ldb-4.0
INCLUDE=-I/usr/include


I am at a loss - this is my first attempt to do anything on a SuSE box.


Sujit