Rule number 1 of an Oracle recovery process

TAKE AN IMMEDIATE BACKUP OF YOUR CURRENT CONTROLFILES, IF THEY ARE ACCESSIBLE. I've seen this happen so many times it's not even funny anymore: if a recovery process needs to be re-started because something went wrong and you haven't kept a copy of a controlfile as it was before you started the recovery, you are stuck big time.

Alternatively enable only one of the copies of the controlfile before the recovery starts(through init.ora) and replace if and when needed with a copy from one of the other pre-recovery images.

Corollary to first rule:

if your redo log files are accessible, then take a backup of all of them (or at least the currently active one - check the alert log to find out which) BEFORE you start the recovery process.

These simple steps saved me so much hassle over the years I can't even begin to stress how important they are.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam