DB recovery from archived redo logs

Hi,
I have a db running in archive log mode. I want to recover the db to a given point in time. I have a full offline backup and all the logs files covering the intervening period.
I cannot take the live db offline and restore the old copy, so I need to either give the db a new name and restore it to the same machine or restore the db on a completely different machine.Then I can extract the required info and apply it to the live one.

So far I've
1. started nomount
2 created a controlfile ( statement edited for new machine a dir structure, noresetlogs specified)
3. alter database recover automatic until time ....

which gives no errors but fails to advance the db from the state it is from the restarted cold backup.

I've also tried

3. alter database open noresetlogs
4. alter database recover automatic until time ....

which gives ora-1124 cannot recover data file 1 - file is in use or recovery.

Is the problem relating to not re-using the backed up control file and therefore requires me to recover the db into the same db it was backed up from or is there something I've missed

Thanks for any assistance

Barry Jones Received on Mon Jun 07 1999 - 10:59:52 CDT