Re: How do you remove an Oracle service?

Frank <fvanbortel_at_netscape.net> wrote in message news:<3E9EF527.3050300_at_netscape.net>...
> Howard J. Rogers wrote:
>
> >>Just remove them using the registry editor (regedit, or regedt32)
> >
> >
> > Uh huh. You recommend hacking around the registry if you want to. I'd rather
> > not. Most Windows users would rather not, too.
> >
> Why not? If there's alternative (oradim will not work, as this is the
> agent, not the instance) in the form of a program to do it in a
> controlled way, the best alternative is to edit it yourself.
> After all, the registry is nothing more than some kind of ini-file.
>
> And I would not consider that hacking around - at least you do it
> yourself, and (I assume) you know exactly what you are doing.
> If you would feel more comfortable by renaming it, rename it.
> Sure to delete - delete! It's up to you. You are in control, not
> the PC.
>
> Besides, you do change your .login (or .csh, or ...) file, do
> you? You do type 'set oracle_sid=orcl' or 'export ORACLE_SID=orcl',
> don't you? Similar exercise, in my book.
>
> The registry is no holy place, and there are two tools to edit it.
> Learn to use them, learn the registry.

In defense of Howard's statement I would say this... "You can hack registry but completely do it at your own risk". If you want to simply edit a certain value in the registry and are comfortable with manually editing it... then by all means go ahead. e.g. changing the ORA_<SID>_AUTOSTART flag in the registry to TRUE or FALSE.

HOWEVER, services are completely managed by SCM (Service Control Manager). You can use SCM to install, remove, start, stop, pause etc a service. Some services also have interdependency with other services. Just by hacking registry (as you mentioned) to remove a service is definitely asking for trouble. Windows API advapi32.dll has functions to interact with services in SCM... In particular DeleteService() function is used to mark a service for deletion from the SCM database. There are NT resource kit tools like srvinstw.exe which use this Windows API and can be safely used to remove a service. Going by your logic, why use oradim to even install an Oracle SID service, why not just regedit and create a new key in
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services?

I am sorry but from your post it seems like either you are not familiar with Windows registry or not familiar with Windows services and SCM. In either case, I will definitely recommend that you use a proper tool to remove a service rather then trying to fit a circle in a square.

Regards
/Rauf Sarwar Received on Thu Apr 17 2003 - 23:19:41 CDT