Dear Elgg (and Unix) ninjas,

The question I ask here involves Elgg, but Linux administration as well. I have an embarrassing (and newbie) problem with my Elgg 1.8 website: I have lost the system root password.

My site is running with Debian Squeeze and Apache. I have full access to the database and, in read-only mode, to the Elgg code, but Linux permissions avoids me to copy the data directory. So my problem is how to copy the Elgg data directory with a regular user account. Basically I have to hack my own server to get access to the data directory.

Of course there are backups, but they are stored in a directory owned by root in the same machine (yes, that's not a good idea). Sometimes, being a security paranoid does not pay off :(. 

I have tried to execute a PHP script with Apache to move the directory, but I have no permissions to write on any Apache directory or file; my ISP does not let me send parameters to the Linux kernel when rebooting to avoid the password check; I tried to download the files using wget, but Elgg does not expose the path of the files stored in the data directory; adding new plug-ins is not viable because of the lack of write permissions.

So my last chance to solve this serious problem is to request help to the community. Any idea would be welcomed.

Thanks in advance,

David