Deinstallation of 19c Database Home with 19.11 and 19.12 error: oracle/rat/tfa/util/ManageTFA

Oracle likes you to run Oracle databases on your servers. This is maybe the reason, why you can't uninstall Oracle database version 19.11 (and 19.12) anymore. 

No, obviously, this isn't the reason, I personally do think it is a bug. 

We hit this bug at a customers environment who was upgrading a test database from 19.11 to 19.12 on his Linux server by migrating it into a new 19.12 Oracle software home. After that he wanted to uninstall the existing 19.11 Oracle database home. 

He went to /u01/app/oracle/product/19.11.0/dbhome_1/deinstall and started the deinstallation by running ./deinstall.sh.

When the deinstallation procedure has started, it soon has hit an error:

ERROR: oracle/rat/tfa/util/ManageTfa
Exited from program. 

We then thought we can detach the Oracle Home from the inventory and remove the folder manually aftwerwards. Therefore we tried to use

./runInstaller -silent -detachHome ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME

to remove the home from the inventory. Unfortunately, we got another error. As we were a little bit under time pressure, we decided to rollback the 19.11 RU from the Oracle Home and try to deinstall the software again. This worked without any error. 

If you hit this bug and you want to uninstall the home, just rollback the 19.11 or 19.12 RU with opatch:

- change the location to the OPatch folder and run opatch with lsinventory to see the installed patches:

cd $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch
./opatch lsinventory

The output will look like:

Unique Patch ID: 24175065
Patch description: “Database Release Update : 19.11.0.0.210420 (32545013)”

To rollback the 19.11 datbase Release Update you need to run opatch with the id of the patch. The id is marked at the upper output with the green background. Don't use the Unique Patch ID, it's a different ID and the rollback will not work (I just add this because 99% of the DBAs never needed to uninstall a patch 😇). 

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch rollback -id 32545013

 After the RU is successfully removed, just start ./deinstall.sh again - it will work like designed. 

I don't know if this bug also hits other operating systems like AIX, Solaris or MS Windows. If you got this error there, it would be nice to leave a comment. As 19.13 isn't released yet, I don' know, if this bug exists there also.