Missing users after power failure

[dpaton]

My router/firewall server, running 10.4.8 on a G4 Mini experienced a power failure earlier today, and the UPS went south at the same time, so there was no orderly shutdown. Upon bringing the system back up, it failed to recognize the one user it’s configured for….me. Rebooting verbosely shows loginwindow complaining about a missing user ‘nobody’, and using the password recovery tool on the install DVD doesn’t show any active users. My files are still all there, but it seems that NetInfo has forgotten about me. Is there an easy way to restore myself using terminal from the install DVD? I’ve got no other way to get into the box (ssh, and everything else, is off, ARD fails (obviously), and it doesn’t bring up any of the normal network services like DHCP or the firewall).

Apple’s support pages weren’t much help, and I didn’t find anything with my initial Google search.

Help?

-dave

[dpaton]

Thanks for the KB#…I spent a good half hour scouring the KB on Saturday morning, looking for something about nidb backups, but for some reason my search-fu was not strong. I’ll give it a shot this afternoon.

-dave

[dpaton]

OK, the fix worked fine but with one interesting quirk. The system accounts were restored just fine, as was the general admin account “Administrator”), but the user accounts on the machine (3) all had corrupted passwords that had to be reset from the admin account via the accounts prefpane. It also took a few restarts of the services to get them all up and running again, which was unusual, but things seem stable for now. I’ve got a backup running now, and I’ll be spending some quality audit time with the system this weekend to see if any weirdness crept in, but it seems to be up and happy again.

Thanks

-dave

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