Smith, It is always better to have a separate user/home for ASM. However some cases (like the new 11g bug 5728245) you may have to keep the ASM and RDBMS in the same home under same user though 11g advocates separate users for CRS,ASM and DB. Coming to your original question, at present there is no ASM version of database binaries. You may have to do a comple rdbms software install in the ASM home. Hopefully this may change in future with an ASM only software install by stripping the unwanted tools/utilities/libraries in the ASM Home. -- Best Regards, K Gopalakrishnan Co-Author: Oracle Wait Interface, Oracle Press 2004 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/007222729X/ Author: Oracle Database 10g RAC Handbook, Oracle Press 2006 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007146509X/ -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l