So your Oracle database install crashes and burns and you are left with a mess to clean up.

Oracle now provides some canned de-install scripts to try to do this for you, but in my experience they are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

First, let’s verify where Oracle did the install.  Check the oraInst.loc file in the /etc directory:

[oracle@orpheus database]$ cat /etc/oraInst.loc
inventory_loc=/u01/app/oraInventory
inst_group=oinstall

 
This tells us that the Oracle inventory is located in the directory /u01/app/oraInventory

We now need to check a file called inventory.xml which resides in the inventory directory under the ContentsXML sub-directory.

[oracle@orpheus database]$ cat /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved. -->
<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->
<INVENTORY>
<VERSION_INFO>
<SAVED_WITH>11.2.0.1.0</SAVED_WITH>
<MINIMUM_VER>2.1.0.6.0</MINIMUM_VER>
</VERSION_INFO>
<HOME_LIST>
<HOME NAME="Ora11g_gridinfrahome1" LOC="/u01/app/11.2.0/grid" TYPE="O" IDX="1" CRS="true">
<NODE_LIST>
<NODE NAME="orpheus"/>
<NODE NAME="eurydice"/>
</NODE_LIST>
</HOME>
<HOME NAME="OraDb11g_home1" LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1" TYPE="O" IDX="2">
<NODE_LIST>
<NODE NAME="orpheus"/>
<NODE NAME="eurydice"/>
</NODE_LIST>
</HOME>
</HOME_LIST>
</INVENTORY>

 
So now let’s delete the database home directory we found in the inventory.xml file:

[oracle@orpheus database]$ cd /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0
[oracle@orpheus 11.2.0]$ rm -R dbhome_1
rm: remove write-protected regular file `dbhome_1/oc4j/j2ee/home/config/jazn.security.props'? y

 
Finally we need to update the inventory.xml file to remove the references to the deleted Oracle home. We will delete everything between the second set of <HOME> tags. When you are done, your inventory.xml file should look more like this:

[oracle@orpheus 11.2.0]$ cat /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved. -->
<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->
<INVENTORY>
<VERSION_INFO>
<SAVED_WITH>11.2.0.1.0</SAVED_WITH>
<MINIMUM_VER>2.1.0.6.0</MINIMUM_VER>
</VERSION_INFO>
<HOME_LIST>
<HOME NAME="Ora11g_gridinfrahome1" LOC="/u01/app/11.2.0/grid" TYPE="O" IDX="1" CRS="true">
<NODE_LIST>
<NODE NAME="orpheus"/>
<NODE NAME="eurydice"/>
</NODE_LIST>
</HOME>
</HOME_LIST>
</INVENTORY>