Ever wanted to access a file on a non-mounted EXT2/3/4 partition? Don't have permissions to mount a filesystem? Instead of mounting the filesystem, one can use e2cat to display the contents of any file on a non-mounted EXT2/3/4 filesystem (you still need read-acess to the device or file, though) - like so:

e2cat /dev/sda5 /grub/menu.lst # if the boot partition is on /dev/sda5

Download source: e2cat.c