Removing the Oracle software:

Use the deinstall command (new since 11gR2):

See: Chapter 7, "Removing Oracle Database Software"

Important!
Oracle strongly recommends that you configure your installations using an Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) configuration, and that you reserve Oracle base and Oracle home paths for exclusive use of Oracle software.
If you have any user data in these locations in the Oracle base that is owned by the user account that owns the Oracle software, then the deinstall command deletes this data.

You can remove the software by running the following command:

$ORACLE_HOME/deinstall/deinstall

Press Enter (or if you have a listener with a different name, enter it):

….

Specify all Single Instance listeners that are to be de-configured [LISTENER]:
…

The deinstall command will ask for some other information such as the database names which are in this ORACLE_HOME.

You’ll notice that after running the command, the directory dbhome_1 is gone in /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0:

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0
[oracle@ORAVM1 11.2.0]$ ls
[oracle@ORAVM1 11.2.0]$


In the next post I’ll install the software separately, and create a database with dbca afterwards.