How can I unprotect folders in corrupted MacOS?

[Pony01]

Hello

During an attempt to defrag my macbook with Snow Leopard installed using Drive Genius 2.2, something happened, the process stopped and the file system was corrupted to the point that I cannot even boot the system anymore with the error window that usually appears after a crash.

I tried to reinstall MacOS 10.5-6 overwriting the existing one but the only option I am given is by initalize the disk and losing all my data. So I got access to my HD by running the latest Ubuntu 10.4 live CD to try move my data to an external HD.

I can have access to my Maintosh HD through Ubuntu live CD but the folders I need to save are protected (from myself!) and no way to open, copy or move any of them. The folders are marked with an "X".

Any suggestion to come out from this empasse would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks!

Eugene

[tpgames]

I thought in Ubuntu, you can right click on a folder, and change the permissions. However, when I moved unlocked folders to an external HD, Ubuntu will automatically lock them. Then I thought I was able to right click on those newly moved locked folders, and go into permissions, and reverse the lock. This was my experience using Ubuntu, but I was on an ancient PC, at the time. I forget how to right click on a mac, but I have a Logitech Mouse for my Mac, so that I'd have easy right click capabilities.

[Nepomuk]

If I remember correctly, in a Ubuntu Live Session you should have no sudo password set, so try opening a console and then running the command

gksu nautilus

This should open a file explorer with administrative rights. Normally, the administrator should have the right to move every file on the system.

If this doesn't work, you could try resetting the rights of the files in question. The command (as this is again in command line) would be

sudo chmod -R a+xrw /

for all files on the system or

sudo chmod -R a+xrw /path/to/directory

The -R part makes the command recursive, so you won't have to use it on every single file. Then, try moving them like you did before.

If that doesn't work, get back to us and tell us about what went wrong.

Greetings,
Nepomuk