Trying to recover from a real disaster

Question

It's difficult to explain... the whole chain of disasters, in most due to bad practices. I will appreciate so much any help
We have (really, we had...) a Oracle 10g 10.2.0.1 server with 6 databases running on it. We did RMAN backups to tapes of all of them using Symantec Netbackup. The script was like this:
RUN {
ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch00 TYPE 'SBT_TAPE';
BACKUP
%BACKUP_TYPE%
FORMAT 'bk_u%%u_s%%s_p%%p_t%%t'
DATABASE;
sql 'alter system archive log current';
RELEASE CHANNEL ch00;
# Backup all archive logs
ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch00 TYPE 'SBT_TAPE';
BACKUP
FILESPERSET 20
FORMAT 'arch-s%%s-p%%p'
ARCHIVELOG ALL DELETE INPUT;
RELEASE CHANNEL ch00;
# Backup Control files
ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch00 TYPE 'SBT_TAPE';
BACKUP
FORMAT 'ctrl_u%u_s%s_p%p_t%t'
CURRENT CONTROLFILE;
RELEASE CHANNEL ch00;
Last week the server crashed down, due to phisycal problems on the hard disks, and we haven't been able to get it up. So we have to restore the databases from scratch from the backup tapes we have.
We had RMAN catalog database on the same server... so we have lost it too and we can't use ir to restore.
We cannot use the DBIDs because we don't know them and we can't see them on the server.
In order to get the control files from the backup, another way to restore de databases, we have looked at the documentation and it indicates to use the control file name. The problem the control file name is the same in all the databases, so RMAN always return the file of the last database backed up.
Maybe the first thing to do will be to restore the database containing RMAN, but I dont' know if it is possible in this situation.
All help will be appreciate. Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Hemant K Chitale wrote:
What about timestamps ? If the databases were backed up at different times these files would have the respective timestamps.Maybe it could work! Could I be able to restore a control file, or a entire db, using a timestamp parameter?? Listing all backups of a certain days (all dbs, backups done one by one) I have this result:
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 10 12 ctrl_us_pt:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 10 12 ctrl_us_pt:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 10 12 ctrl_us_pt:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 9175040 jul 09 12 ctrl_us_pt:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 8650752 jul 09 12 ctrl_us_pt:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 09 12 ctrl_us_pt:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 219676672 jul 09 14 arch-s554-p1:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 292552704 jul 09 14 arch-s899-p1:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 222822400 jul 09 14 arch-s226-p1:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 86769664 jul 09 14 arch-s911-p1:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 8388608 jul 09 14 arch-s919-p1:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 238813184 jul 09 14 arch-s860-p1:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 09 33 bk_uh9mh1p66_s553_p1_t756081862:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7602176 jul 09 33 bk_us2mh1oqv_s898_p1_t756081503:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 09 33 bk_u71mh1oep_s225_p1_t756081113:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 9175040 jul 09 33 bk_usdmh1nhk_s909_p1_t756080180:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 8650752 jul 09 33 bk_usmmh17lv_s918_p1_t756063935:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 7340032 jul 09 33 bk_uqrmh167c_s859_p1_t756062444:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 827064320 jul 09 33 bk_uh8mgvv0j_s552_p1_t756022291:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 1000079360 jul 09 33 bk_us1mgvv0k_s897_p1_t756022292:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 725614592 jul 09 33 bk_u70mgvv0j_s224_p1_t756022291:\
-rw------- SYSTEM SYSTEM 942145536 jul 09 33 bk_umemgv9ar_s718_p1_t756000091:\
I was restoring first with NBU, but maybe there's a way to restore a particular controlfile with RMAN using anything more than filename. This is needes because as you can see it's the same for all dbs... Is it possible?
Thanks!