Re: [tlug] Suse 10 file access without root?

[Edward Middleton <emiddleton@example.com>]

Lyle H Saxon wrote:
[snip]
> My friend .. asking if I could help him recover some work files he had on the machine. ..
>   

I hope you made the usually disclaimer that anything you did could cause
further damage and that if the value of the documents were significant
he should take the machine to a professional data recovery company.

> I It looks like I could do something *if* he had remembered (I'm
> embarrassed for him just to write this) the root password.
>   

Unless the drive is encrypted, you don't need the root password to
access the filesystem.  You should be able to access it from the boot
disk.  If the harddisk supports S.M.A.R.T[1] you can check As Alexei
said try running fsck before mounting it.

Edward

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.