No user account at login screen (Apple silicon)

Question

I have a recent Apple silicon Macbook Pro running Monterey.

After a reboot, my user name vanished from the login screen. I am the only user, so there is apparently no way to login.

By holding the power button, I can boot into startup options. From there, it asks me to "select a user you know the password for", and here, my login name/photo appear, and I am able to login to macOS Recovery mode.

In recovery mode, I can open up a terminal window. From there, it appears that much of my data is gone: for instance, my home folder is not in either /Users or /Volumes/<my_disk_name/Users. I don't know whether this is because the data is truly gone, or because it is concealing it from me due to encryption or something.

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for how I might try to recover my user account. I have found some previous posts but they all seem to be for Intel macs and older versions of the OS. I have a Time Machine backup from an hour or two before the computer died but I'd rather avoid losing my last hour of work if possible.

Answer 1

I used the resetpassword command recommended in this post, and I am once again able to login[^fn1]. And all my data appears to be there. So that is the important thing.

However, my image and name are still missing from the login screen. I have to manually type my username in, then my password. That's not the end of the world, but it does make me wonder whether there's a better way of restoring my user account.

[^fn1]: FWIW, I "reset" my password to precisely the same thing as it was before.