Database Software

Hello.

I'm a UNIX SA, not a DBA, so I appologies if I seem alittle daft when it comes to Oracle.

We've been doing RMAN backups of our databases for some time. I handle the NetBackup side of things and our DBA handles the RMAN side. Looking forward to a possible major disaster I'm trying to become more comfortable with using RMAN myself so that I can be more helpful in case of a real disaster. I'd like to be able to recover complete databases from scratch (on a new bare system) for 2 reasons: 1) It allows me to verify (for paranoia reasons) offsite RMAN backups from time to time, and 2) if a real disaster occured that obliterated our current systems completely I would need to get databases recovered so that our DBA could check and get them running rather than just doing the normal SA thing and say "NetBackups ready, have fun".

I've looked through the docs and I bought the 9i RMAN book, but I'm unclear on recovering from a bare system.
How much of the system needs to be installed and/or recovered before I can recover a database? Obviously Oracle itself needs to be installed or recovered from tape, but do I need to create a new empty database before recovery? What do I need to know about the old database before I can recover it from tape?

For testing, completely seperate from our production enviroment, I have a NetBackup server with the RMAN offsite duplications loaded, I've got a system with Oracle installed and 1 empty database and I've linked the RMAN client into Oracle (libobk). Thats the extent of my knowlage as an SA. What do I need to do now to recover the database and bring it online?

Any help is greatly appreciated.