initramfs boot problem! help!

[ilostthegame]

I have had Ubuntu 10.04 LTS running fine on my laptop for a few months...haven't done any risky hacks or anything, and earlier today it just froze when I logged in between the login screen and my desktop. So I hard rebooted it, and I got this black screen with a terminal prompt saying "initramfs" and saying that 'init was not found.' I am stumped, and I cannot just reinstall the OS. I tried going to a the live disc to back up my files, but I apparently don't even have permission to copy them to an external drive (?).

I am new to Linux, please help I am a student and I need every file on that hard drive!

[Dapper Dan]

Sorry to hear of your misfortune. Did you have your valuable files on a seperate /home partition? When you say, "but I apparently don't even have permission to copy them to an external drive" what happens that does not allow you to do this? What error? Are you trying to transfer the files as sudo? Was your external drive also mounted from the live cd?

[devils casper]

I tried going to a the live disc to back up my files, but I apparently don't even have permission to copy them to an external drive (?).

What is the filesystem of External Hard disk's partition? If its NTFS, you have to mount it manually using ntfs-3g.

mkdir backup
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/<partition_of_external_disk> backup -o defaults,umask=0

Or press Alt+F2 and type this

gksu nautilus

Above code will launch Nautilus with root privileges and you will have permission to copy/paste anywhere.

Regarding Ubuntu boot problem, does it drop at bash prompt or just hang?

[ilostthegame]

Thanks for the responses. Actually, I figured it out about 2 minutes after posting the question...

sudo nautilus

did the trick, and I successfully backed up all my files.

Thanks,
ilostthegame

[devils casper]

If you are using LiveCD then sudo nautilus and gksu nautilus don't make any difference because LiveCD doesn't preserve anything. But, in case of installed distro, only gksu is recommended for GUI packages.