oracle is back to live after a long time - 36h give or take,

procedure was:

1. connect sqlplus sys/******* as sysdba
2. shutdown immediate
3. startup nomount
4. restore control file
5. shutdown abort
6. startup mount
7. exit
8. export MALLOC_CHECK_=0
9. rman catalog rman/******@BACKUP target sys/******
10. restore database
11. recover database
12. alter database open resetlogs;

a simple 9 step procedure once you got it all figured out and just because a ******** barge hat to cap the cables at the sacramento river and took me out of business.

Helpfull links: this

or like a wise man said:

boss: how long do you need to fix the problem?
wise man: 10 seconds after I found the solution