My girlfriend broke her iBook G4 so she can't start it up.
I tried downloading a Linux live CD that works with a PPC processor and ended up with the Gentoo live CD.
I managed to mount the Mac's HDD using sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/hda /media/elin but this is where I'm stuck:

I can access the HDD and see it's contents, but I can't access some of it's folders (i.e. Desktop, Documents, Library, Movies, Music and Pictures). When I use the ls -l command on them I get:
drwx------ 1 501 501 ...etc.

What does 501 mean? It says that 501 is both it's user and group, and when I click the folders I get the error message "The Folder contents could not be displayed. You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "<name of folder>"." even though I'm running as root. Why does this happen and how can I access the files?

SystemRescueCD just came out with 1.1.7 today.
Also UltimateBootCD.
I used Ubuntu-8.04 LiveCD to get my files, etc from my HD when Unetbootin
destroyed my MBR on Wnidows XP.
Running Ubuntu live you have full root access to the PC and it automounts partitions too. Just go to the "places" button at the top bar, then "removable media". Should show and access all partitions.
Additionally, if you don't have a USB/DVD/CD to get your files onto, use a free temp filehosting utility and upload your files and when it's done it'll give you a url to paste into your browser so you can download the files later.
I used webfilehost.com
They have a 500MB limit and you gotta wait 60sec to get the link active, but others have up to 5-10 GB, free-just google
around.
hope that helps...

I don't get what you're saying. I didn't get Ubuntu to work with PPC, and Gentoo is one of the few OS that worked on iBook. Also the problem wasn't mounting the files, it was gaining access to them. Why would Ubuntu or SystemRescueCD be any different? (btw, SystemRescueCD for x86 just came out today.. the SystemRescueCD for PPC was last released in 2004.

How does hosting my files on the web help? Of course I have HDDs and USB sticks.