Root Account Not Zero (0)

I have enabled the root account on a bunch of Mac's in order to deploy some software. It's required to do it. It would be good if we can avoid the discussion about enabling the root account.
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In any case, on a couple of machines, the root account has a UID and GID of 4294967294:
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3doorsdown:var ddmg$ id root
uid=4294967294(root) gid=4294967294(nobody) groups=4294967294(nobody),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),61(localaccounts),1 2(everyone)
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I'm not sure how these got this way.


Anyone know how or if it is possible to fix this?

I have tried the following dscl command, but it returns an error about which I can't find much useful info:

3doorsdown:~ <local_admin>$ dscl . -change /Users/root UniqueID 4294967294 0
<main> attribute status: eDSAttributeNotFound
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14134 (eDSAttributeNotFound)

Anyone have any ideas or know of a way to fix this without reinstalling the OS?

what happens if you do a

dscl . -list /Users

Oh, there's a root account there, but I had done a

dscl . - create /Users/root NFSHomeDirectory /var/root

based on another post I had seen. To wit:

3doorsdown:~ ddmg$ dscl . -list /Users
_amavisd
_appowner
_appserver
_ard
_atsserver
_calendar
_carddav
_clamav
_coreaudiod
_cvmsroot
_cvs
_cyrus
_devdocs
_dovecot
_dpaudio
_eppc
_installer
_jabber
_lda
_locationd
_lp
_mailman
_mcxalr
_mdnsresponder
_mysql
_pcastagent
_pcastserver
_postfix
_qtss
_sandbox
_screensaver
_securityagent
_serialnumberd
_softwareupdate
_spotlight
_sshd
_svn
_teamsserver
_timezone
_tokend
_trustevaluationagent
_unknown
_update_sharing
_usbmuxd
_uucp
_windowserver
_www
_xgridagent
_xgridcontroller
daemon
ddmg
guest1
Guest2
nobody
root

I called Apple Support. They said there's no known way to recover short of re-installing the OS.

BUT they said that someone out there might have figured out a way . . .