Problems after upgrade

[Derrick Ryalls]

> I upgraded my server from FreeBSD 4.6.2 to version 4.8. After 
> this, my passwd file was empty and my master.passwd was gone! 
> I have a backup of these files and now I need to rebuild my 
> users database. Is there a way to do this from my old files? 
> I also need them for my SMB network.
> 

Sounds like a mergemaster gone bad.  If you have a backup as you say you do,
I think you just need to merge the two files together into the new file.  I
say merge because going from 4.6.2 to 4.8, a couple system entries were
added to the password file.  Easiest way would probably be to copy the new
lines from the new/blank password file to a copy of your backed up password
file via vipw, then mv your manually merged file into the normal system
location.  Good luck.