Permissions problem/mistake - HELP!

[Scotticism101]

This evening I made a big mistake while changing permissions, and can no longer login to my computer. With my Home folder open, I was trying to change the permissions on several music folders - I had a lot of folders, so I decided to hit Ctrl-A to change it automatically on all my music folders, and also hit the 'apply to subfolders and files' button.

The Ctrl-A selected ALL of the folders on the machine, but because I have enough music folders to fill more than a screen, I didn't realize it until after the fact. Suddenly, my computer couldn't recognize any file on the computer, couldn't tell what they were, couldn't even recognize the folders as folders, so I couldn't even open them. I couldn't change the permissions back, because the computer couldn't figure out what the files were in the first place.

In a panic I restarted, and now I can't even log on. I can't log on in failsafe mode, except a failsafe terminal, which I don't know how to use effectively enough to help me, or really at all for that matter. When I try to log on I get a message that 644 permissions are gone (or something along those lines) and then "Your last login attempt lasted less than 10 seconds. If this is a problem, try booting in a failsafe mode."

If anyone can give me some tips, I'd greatly appreciate it - I'm in college and NOT deleting all the stuff that I hadn't quite gotten around to backing up in the last 60 days or so would be wonderful, and so would having a computer again... I'm currently running Celena 3.1, and right now off the boot CD - I can't seem to even find the screwed up files through the CD, so I don't know how to fix them at all.

For the record, I'm relatively new with Linux, so I know the basics but that's about it.

Thanks for your help!!

[focalguy]

Booting from the live cd would be my suggestion and it looks like you are already doing that.

Is the live cd mounting your hard disks when it comes up? What do you mean that you can't find the files even?

[focalguy]

Looking here: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=9873&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Did you just post the same question under different names? That's really not helpful to anyone if so.

[Guest]

My apologies for the double post, it got moved because I apparently accidentally posted it in the wrong forum section, and then I couldn't find it this morning - I thought I didn't post it successfully and therefore re-posted. My mistake - I seem to have bad luck with computers this week...