If you’re not using Oracle’s RMAN for backup management but you have turned on archive mode for hot backups, you can create a job in Enterprise Manager (Maintenance -> Manage Current Backups).
Recently I ran into a problem with one our Enterprise Manager installs where scheduled jobs would not run. So, I wrote a very simple RMAN script to clear out the references to any archive files that I’ve moved elsewhere or deleted:
RMAN=/oranr/10g/bin/rman
$RMAN nocatalog target / < <EOF
crosscheck backup;
crosscheck archivelog all;
delete noprompt expired archivelog all;
delete noprompt expired backup;
delete noprompt obsolete;
EOF
