freebsd stable - Jun 2004 - newbie question - users deleted after playing with sysinstall

Hi

I've just finished install FreeBSD 4.10 for the first time. I'm an
experienced linux user, but have no experience with FreeBSD. after a very
basic installation (only the first step, to get ssh) I've put the computer
at my ISP (of-course everything is blocked by a firewall) and continued
from home. I then installed some packages from the "Distribution"
menu,
and "played" with the menus to see what I can configure. today, I
couldn't
login to the computer (ssh), and when I checked (I had someone there who
logged in locally) I found out root has no password and the regular
user I created was gone. my question is: could something I've done in
sysinstall delete the user and root password? it's not likely that someone
broke into the system because it's completely blocked (only open from my
IP).

thanx
-- 
Haim

On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 11:38:13AM +0300, Haim Ashkenazi
typed:
> Hi
> 
> I've just finished install FreeBSD 4.10 for the first time. I'm an
> experienced linux user, but have no experience with FreeBSD. after a very
> basic installation (only the first step, to get ssh) I've put the
computer
> at my ISP (of-course everything is blocked by a firewall) and continued
> from home. I then installed some packages from the "Distribution"
menu,
> and "played" with the menus to see what I can configure. today, I
couldn't
> login to the computer (ssh), and when I checked (I had someone there who
> logged in locally) I found out root has no password and the regular
> user I created was gone. my question is: could something I've done in
> sysinstall delete the user and root password? it's not likely that
someone
> broke into the system because it's completely blocked (only open from
my
> IP).
Yes, that very likely. For instance, if you install the "bin" 
distribution more than once, it'll overwrite all files in /etc, including
master.passwd each time you do that.

Ruben
> thanx
> -- 
> Haim
> 
> 
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> user I created was gone. my question is: could something I've done in
> sysinstall delete the user and root password?
Did you install the 'bin' distribution? I think it overwrites
/etc/passwd but
I believe there is backup left at /var/backups

Regards,

David Garcia Watkins
dgw@qlogic.net