Passwords - access to another drive's root/home folders - how ?

[Mik93]

I have an FC3 machine up and running.
I have a 2nd disk from another machine. On this disk are files / folders that were password protected whilst the disk was in the other machine.
The user names are known and the same as the FC3 box; the passwords are different (but known).

How do I open the folders from the 2nd disk. "SU ROOT <password of disk 2's ROOT>" is rejected because it doesn't match the root password of disk 1 !!!

Is there a way to pass the user and password to a folder / file at the time I open it ? e.g files: GRUB.conf or /home/<username>

Mike

[jordower]

if the file is owned by root, you dont need to mess around with the old root psswd you should usse the current root psswd because that is what the current machine thinks is the psswd for the old files

[winter]

in linux it's not the username that matters its the "UID" which is a number. For example my uid at work is 1104(to do non administrative tasks). So as long as you have a user with the same uid you can access files thatthe user owns. All you do to recover data from a disk is to mount the disk copy the files you need then set the apropriate rights on thouse files.

[Mik93]

Info: All my access is using Knoppix 3.9
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1. You can't copy a password protected file / folder because you don't have access to it !

2. I haven't tried creating a user with the same UID as the protected files because I don't know how to do it in knoppix !

3. There is no public knoppix password for root so the disk doesn't know one !

4. Attempting to "Run" a file via the knoppix menu ... asks for a user and password. Giving the correct data still won't open the file.

5. Re-connecting my normal disk#1; adding appropriate mount points for disk #1 (/olddisk_rt; /olddisk_boot); updating fstab to include the "old" disk#2; reboot via grub into FC3 (F8 to force boot via disk#1):. . .
I see the unmounted disk#2 in the tree. If I try to mount it I get:-
"wrong filesystem type, bad option, bad superblock OR too many mounted filesystems"
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Because of the problems with the FC3 mount I prefer to continue with knoppix where I can at least see the contents of the partitions.
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(remember the problem is not to copy the data,it is to be able to reboot disk#2)

Mike[/quote]

[a thing]

in linux it's not the username that matters its the "UID" which is a number. For example my uid at work is 1104(to do non administrative tasks). So as long as you have a user with the same uid you can access files thatthe user owns. All you do to recover data from a disk is to mount the disk copy the files you need then set the apropriate rights on thouse files.

Yes, at least for /home the UID is the issue. You need to copy the line in /etc/passwd for your non-root user and paste it into every distro's /etc/passwd.