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Removing an Old Oracle GRID_HOME After an Upgrade

HenriqueBy Updated:3 Mins Read

This post is also available in: Português (Portuguese (Brazil))

After upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure, the old GRID_HOME often stays behind — its binaries, configuration files, and inventory entry all still present on the system. The deinstall utility is the Oracle-supported way to clean everything up in one shot.

💡 If the Oracle Home directory was already deleted manually and you only need to clean up the inventory.xml entry, this is not the right procedure. See: How to Remove an ORACLE_HOME from inventory.xml Using runInstaller.

Prerequisites

  • The GRID_HOME you want to remove must not be the active one. CRS must be running from a different home.
  • Run as the Grid Infrastructure owner (grid or oracle, depending on your setup).

1. Identify the GRID_HOME to remove

Check inventory.xml to list all registered homes:

cat /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml

Example output:

<HOME_LIST>
  <HOME NAME="OraGI19Home1" LOC="/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid"      TYPE="O" IDX="1" CRS="true"/>
  <HOME NAME="OraGI19Home2" LOC="/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920"  TYPE="O" IDX="5"/>
  <HOME NAME="OraHome1"     LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0.0/dbhome_1" TYPE="O" IDX="3"/>
</HOME_LIST>

The active home is OraGI19Home1 (note the CRS="true" attribute). The candidate for removal is OraGI19Home2.

2. Export the path of the home to remove

export OLD_GRID_HOME=/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920

3. Confirm which GRID_HOME is currently active

⚠️ Do not skip this step. The deinstall utility permanently removes binaries and configuration files. Confirming the active home before proceeding is the difference between a clean decommission and taking down your production environment.

$OLD_GRID_HOME/srvm/admin/getcrshome

Expected output — must point to a different home than $OLD_GRID_HOME:

/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid

If the output matches $OLD_GRID_HOME, stop immediately. You have the wrong home exported.

4. Run the deinstall

$OLD_GRID_HOME/deinstall/deinstall

The process is interactive and will ask for confirmations. A successful run ends with:

Successfully detached Oracle home '/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920' from the central inventory on the local node.
Successfully deleted directory '/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920' on the local node.
Oracle Universal Installer cleanup was successful.

5. Validate the result in inventory.xml

cat /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml

The removed home will now show REMOVED="T":

<HOME NAME="OraGI19Home2" LOC="/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920" TYPE="O" IDX="5" REMOVED="T"/>

💡 This is expected behavior — deinstall marks the entry as removed rather than deleting it from the XML. OUI ignores entries flagged with REMOVED="T" in future operations. If you need the entry completely gone from the file, use runInstaller -detachHome as covered here: How to Remove an ORACLE_HOME from inventory.xml.

6. Leftover files

If any files remain in the directory due to permission issues during deinstall, it is safe to remove them manually — the home is already detached from the inventory:

rm -rf /u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920

Quick Reference

export OLD_GRID_HOME=/u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid1920

$OLD_GRID_HOME/srvm/admin/getcrshome

$OLD_GRID_HOME/deinstall/deinstall

cat /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml

rm -rf $OLD_GRID_HOME

References

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