Oracle 8i install problem

I'm well away with my 8i install now (on Linux Red Hat 6.1), but unfortunately I did it as root at first, then realised I was being naughty, so I've started again as oracle, and now when I press Next on the File Locations screen I get a dialog with a

picture of an alarm bell ringing and the message "The target area /home/oraInventory cannot be used because it is in an invalid state". Needless to say, the installer prog will let me do anything else now.

So what does it mean (I guess it's because I aborted a previous installation), and how do I fix it?

thanks,

• Kev