Testing an rman backup

Environment: Oracle 10.2.0.2.0 HP-UX B 11.23

I am performing hot backups with rman in nocatalog mode. I would like to test restore procedures on the same node without destroying the existing database. Ideally, this should restore the database as a new instance with data files in different directories. I know that I can do this with the duplicate command, but that command requires rman to connect to the source database. Connecting to the source database, in my opinion, invalidates the test since I need assurance that I can recreate the database from scratch using only the rman backup files, the spfile, and the backup of the control file.

At this point I do not have the luxury of a clean server on which to run this test, but I do have sufficient disk space for a second copy of the instance.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Peter Schauss

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