"The local farm is not accessible."-error

I came across the following error message when I was trying to do some powershell configuration on my FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 setup:

"The local farm is not accessible. Cmdlets with FeatureDependencyId are not registered."

At first I ignored this message, but when I tried to do some configuration using the Get-SPEnterpriseSearchExtendedQueryProperty cmdlet I got the following error, indicating the this cmdlet wasn't registered:

Apparently, this cmdlet is one that runs on farm level.

I didn't understand why my farm wasn't accessible, since I was running this powershell script on the SharePoint server itself as a farm administrator. I checked the event log (14Hive\LOGS) and found out I didn't have sufficient rights on the SharePoint configuration database:

01/05/2010 08:58:28.03     PowerShell.exe (0x2618)                     0x10F4    SharePoint Foundation             Database                          880j    High        SqlError: 'Login failed for user 'DEMO\mark'.'    Source: '.Net SqlClient Data Provider' Number: 18456 State: 1 Class: 14 Procedure: '' LineNumber: 65536 Server: 'sql'     
01/05/2010 08:58:28.03     PowerShell.exe (0x2618)                     0x10F4    SharePoint Foundation             Database                          3351    Critical    SQL database login for 'SharePoint_Config_SP2010DEMO' on instance 'sql' failed. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.  Login failed for user 'DEMO\mark'.     

When I made sure my account had sufficient rights, the problem was solved!

I guess this problem can pop-up in other occasions as well, so my advice is to check the log as soon as you encounter similar problems!