Mac won't start up - recovering files with linux boot disk?

dowie · 19 Dec 2009 at 20:23

I'm perhpas being a bit of a n00b here but could do with some help/suggestions

basically my flatmates powerbook G4 won't start up and she's got a couple of files saved on the desktop which it would be good to recover before she takes it to the mac store (everything else is backed up)

I downloaded ubuntu distro for power pc, burned onto dvd and the powerbook boots up find from the dvd drive - problem is when I go into the users folder and try to access the folder for her desktop I don't have permission...

khimbar · 19 Dec 2009 at 21:14

Get another Mac and boot up in target disk mode?

dowie · 19 Dec 2009 at 21:20

cheers might try that tomorrow - need to get a firewire cable

have just booted up using cmd s

then:

fsck -fy

it seems there were errors on the HD

though re-booting now is still painfully slow....

dowie · 20 Dec 2009 at 00:39

still won't frickin boot

booted up linux again using ubuntu disk

used sudo nautilus and have access to all files in her user directory - still kicks off at me when I try to back up flatmate's work by simply copying across - luckily they're just word documents so opened up in openoffice and saved onto flashdrive - so at least the problem of her losing all her work is solved....

looks like she's managed to save 4GBs worth of stuff on desktop though....

errors on HD were fixed using fsck -fy so am presuming the slow startup must be down to the huge amount of stuff on desktop?.....

joey1211 · 20 Dec 2009 at 00:55

khimbar said:
Get another Mac and boot up in target disk mode?

This is a serious pain. Can't remember the specifics but you'll need to make sure that the architecture matches (powerPC or intel) and possibly the os version. Last time I tried it was a merry-go-round of incompatibilty between the various incartations.