Funny. I looked on one of my Solaris 8 boxes and found that directory as well. I was never aware of it. I've often cleaned up Oracle without knowing about it, and had no problem re-installing. So I'd guess you don't have to wipe it for a "fresh install". However, this is a cleanup step which one would assume the software would take care of is you used the installer to "uninstall" your database software. I don't have a box available to test it. Try it and let me know if it works! -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Stefick Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 7:44 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Cleaning server for fresh install OS: Solaris 8 Oracle: AS10g (9.0.4) Infrastructure I'm in the process of removing all pieces of oracle before doing a fresh install and I found a directory called /var/preserve/oracle which has the following files in it: total 385144 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 13284832 Feb 26 2003 Exaaa0000000229 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 1711112 Mar 3 2002 Exaaa0000000234 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 4110048 Sep 25 2002 Exaaa0000000246 -rw------- 1 oracle dba 28672 Feb 20 2002 Exaaa0000018374 -rw------- 1 oracle dba 84619264 May 6 2002 Exaaa0000023158 -rw------- 1 oracle dba 14831616 Apr 5 2002 Exaaa0000029956 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 24576 Mar 3 2002 Exaab0000000234 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 5167860 Sep 25 2002 Exaab0000000246 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 20536800 Sep 25 2002 Exaac0000000246 -rw------- 1 oracle bin 52692948 Sep 25 2002 Exaad0000000246 Could I remove these files? Also, I found a lot of stuff in /tmp and /var/tmp owned by Oracle.=20 Should all of this be cleaned up as well? Thanks, Scott -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l