OraInventory and its use -:

In the oraInventory directory, the Installer keeps track of what is installed, and information on how to deinstall products. Many of the libraries needed to run the Installer are also in this directory. The Oracle Installer uses the "oraInst.loc" file to determine the location of the oraInventory directory. If this file is blank or contains an invalid entry the Installer will give an error about unable to find oraInventory or may provide an incomplete listing of installed products.


The oraInventory directory must be owned by the user root.

Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) uses oraInventory directory as a repository of the Oracle products that are installed on your machine.

OraInventory Directory

The installer creates the oraInventory directory the first time it is run on your computer. The oraInventory directory keeps an inventory of products that the installer installs on your computer as well as other installation information. If you have previously installed Oracle products, then you may already have an oraInventory directory.

• When a UNIX group name is specified, it grants that group the permission to write to the oraInventory directory. If another group attempts to run the installer, then they must have permission to write to the oraInventory directory. If they do not have permission the installation will fail.

• Be sure the user running the installer has permission to write to the oraInventory directory and all its files. This is required to run the installer.

• The location of oraInventory is defined in /etc/oratab/oraInst.loc for HP 9000 Series HP-UX and AIX-Based Systems.

• The location of oraInventory is defined in /var/opt/oraInst.loc for Sun Solaris.

• The latest log file is oraInventory_location/logs/installActions.log. Log file names of previous installation sessions take the form installActionsdatetime.log.

• Do not delete or manually alter the oraInventory directory or its contents. Doing so can prevent the installer from locating products that you have installed on your system.