i hope ive understood u correctly, well i thought it over again.....
when ls -la in my xen-image folder while logged into on the dom0 the uid and guid is replaced by my current /etc/passwords file, but are still the same.
when i start the domU and log in via ssh and do ls -la again the numbers should be replaced with the /etc/passwords file of the current domU.
so if iam right the uid and guids arent changed and that shouldnt be the problem..
the system boots, most daemons work but when i log into phpmyadmin i see that all tables from the databases r gone, i cant create a db as root and importing an sqldump doesnt work too...
i guess my backup is completely fuc**d up..
or should i give it a try and copy the /etc/password file?