OS X (Apple)

So, my 2 year old managed to pee all over my MacBook. It's dead and I'm attempting to retrieve the files from the hard drive. I installed it as a secondary drive in my Ubuntu box and I can see files, but permissions are preventing me from retrieving my pictures. I tried to change ownership of the files, but the drive is mounted as read-only. From what I read, Ubuntu can't handle the HFS+ journaling. I can't disable journaling from OSX because well... my peeBook is fried. I tried installing "hfsplus", "hfsutils" and "hfsprogs", then ran

Code:

sudo mount -o force /dev/sda2 '/media/mac'

and the mount succeeds, but when I run

Code:

sudo chown -R phil '/media/mac'

I get:

Code:

chown: changing ownership of `/media/mac/Applications/App Store.app/Contents': Read-only file system

for all the files. Any ideas?

Don't try it.
Thank God it came up read-only.

Imho. Take the dead MAC's hard disc to a MAC specialist and get them to copy your data files to a DVD (clearly the O/S content of the disc is unimportant).
No doubt they will mention reparing the MacBook. If the hard disc is intact this could be the easy option.
The MacBook is one of the easiest computers to repair because of its modular design. Unfortunately the modules are not cheap (just in case you think I work for Apple!).

Thanks for the reply. The apple store quoted me $750 to repair the computer, which I do not have. The reason I bought a mac in the first place was because it was Unix based, so I thought I could still maintain the level of control I wanted. Curse you Apple! The apple store also said the only way they could retrieve my files is if I buy another computer. Nice. You say a "MAC specialist". Are you meaning a non-Apple MAC specialist?

A friend I have that used to be a tester for Apple said he has a MAC tower. He said he could stick my drive in it and that there's a disable journaling option. Maybe that should be my next step. Any more ideas?

I was wondering who in the world would name a piece of software 'urine'. Heh.

There's good apple stores and "bad apple" stores. Sounds like you found a really rotten one, as that's simply ridiculous.

I've had good success accessing Macintosh filesystems from a SysRescueCD. Since all modern macs are x86, it booted with surprising ease. Use it to copy files from your hard drive onto a flash drive, or from one hard drive to another...

Do not write to the disk.

Have you tried copying files as root?

Wow I'm an idiot. Of course. I just copied the files as root first, then chown'd them. Got the files now. Thanks a lot!