If you restore files to your hard disk from tape, the files will be restored with their original names. Be sure that passwd contains at least root . If you intend other users to login, be sure their home directories and shells exist. They work at the moment, so I leave them alone. Out of this, I only really have to configure two files, and what they should contain is surprisingly small.
Kangaroo Be sure the directories are right.
Your hard disk may be damaged or dead when the bootdisk is used. Your inittab should be changed so that its sysinit line runs rc or whatever basic boot script will be used. Also, if you want to ensure that users on serial ports cannot login, comment out all the entries for getty which include a ttys or ttyS device at the end of the line. Leave in the tty ports so that you can login at the console. The inittab file defines what the system will run in various states including startup, move to multi-user mode, etc.