database recovery help

Hi all,

          Something went wrong and now i have corruption in my database and it wont start at all. All I have is a backup which is 5 days old. As part of the backup, i have a hot backup of all the datafiles, control file and archive redo log files, which are all 5 days old. Now, i want to recover my database using this backup (even though i loose a week worth of data). I have never done a recovery ( either user-managed or using RMAN) and would like to request some help in this regard. The database is able to mount but is is not able to open, so im assuming that there is no problem with the control file. Im running Oracle 8 on Solaris. So, from my understanding, i have to perform a restore and recovery and to do that will the following work? and is this the standard way of restore and recovery

1. Restore the datafiles backup.

    cp /u08/backup/datafilebackup1.dbf /u02/oradata/DB1/datafile1.dbf     cp /u08/backup/datafilebackup2.dbf /u04/oradata/DB1/datafile2.dbf     ............... restore all the datafiles backups to the original datafile location..........

2. startup mount

      SQL> startup mount;

3. Recover

     SQL> recover database until cancel;

               When prompted give the path and file name of the archived redo log to apply until it gives

               "Media Recovery Complete", if it still asks for archived logs when there are no archive

               logs left to give, then give the location of the latest active online redo log file.

4. open the database

     SQL> aler database open resetlogs;

Is the above process standard way of recovering a database with the backup?

1.Im still not clear on this control file, In this case, do i have to restore the 5 days old control file to recover the database? or can i use the current control file ( because there is no problem with the current control file as the database is mounting)? 2. Where does the RECOVER DATABASE UNTIL CANCEL command look for archived redo log files by default? can i restore the backup arch logs to the archive log destination?

Any information would be of a great help.

Thanks,
Godwin.

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