Locked out of my own system!

[Bluedot]

Well..I was just upgrading my Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04. The packages were all downloaded and the installation was almost complete when....POOF! The power went off. When it came back I booted up my computer to find my keyboard and mouse not working, the display is corrupted, etc. When I booted from a LiveCD, I was shocked to find that the folders which I wanna backup into my USB Flash drive for a new installation of Ubuntu are locked. I can't copy it, view it, it says that I'm not the owner and I don't have permission to view my own files. Is there any way to recover the files? I really need them...

[hellnoire]

You try running as sudo/root? In the LiveCD, go to the Terminal, type 'sudo nautilus' and hit enter. Should allow you to run as root so you can copy the files.

You might next time might want to make sure you back up first before upgrading too.

[Bluedot]

You might next time might want to make sure you back up first before upgrading too.

I know hell, I forgot that. Realized as soon as I was kicked outta my own system. And yes, I discovered the nautilus method myself, but didn't know how to run it from the terminal. I backed up all my files by manually adding permissions to each and every file and then adding sharing features as Administrator.

[hellnoire]

That works. gksudo would have too... and should have been how you launched it, since sudo is the unsafe pass-off to a GRAPHICAL program.