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I decided to de-crypt my home folder yesterday. I copied all of my home folder to an external hard drive with

sudo cp -rp /home/brad /media/brad/WD_4TB/brad.backup

I removed the .ecryptfs directory on the external hard drive. I then rm -rf /home/brad. This left what I thought was the empty /home/brad directory, because it said it was being used. This is probably one place I made my mistake. I logged out and logged in as tempuser. Due to temporary insanity I used mv instead of copying.

sudo mv /media/tempuser/WD_4TB/brad.backup /home/brad

As you can guess this created a subdirectory in /home/brad and I next moved the files from the subdirectory back into /home/brad.

I was able to re-login as brad and all of my data was present where it was before (i thought now unencrypted). When looking at my files I got a message the cache needed updating and it required authentication. I initiated the cache update. Later I rebooted the machine. When I login as brad it returns to the login screen. When I look at the files from another account I see

enter image description here

when I run

ecryptfs-mount-private

root@brad-Main:/home/brad# ecryptfs-mount-private

ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly

when I run

ecryptfs-recover-private

INFO: Searching for encrypted private directories (this might take a while)...

find: ‘/run/user/1001/gvfs’: Permission denied

when I run from the GUI

Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop

I get:

Sorry, but you cannot execute commands from a remote site. This is disabled due to security considerations.

when I run from the command line I get this...

enter image description here

my data seems to be encrypted in .Private

I have logged into user brad from the command line and the same commands give pretty much the same answer. I'm pretty sure startx doesn't work because my home directory files are missing.

If I can decrypt my data I will copy it back off to the external hard drive. At that point I can find a way to replace or fix my brad user account.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

ctrl-alt-delor
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Brad Fennell
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  • You say you typed mv ext/user.backup /home/user. Do you really mean this or did you actually do mv ext/user.backup /home/brad? Everywhere else you use brad but here you reference user. I'd suggest you go back through your question and provide real and complete paths for everything you did (for example, also, ext/home.user is unlikely). – Chris Davies Sep 07 '19 at 17:56
  • I also don't understand why you're trying to decrypt your home directory if you have already copied everything out of it and want to replace it without encryption. – Chris Davies Sep 07 '19 at 17:57
  • Yes, you are correct on the /user and path comment. I have edited the question to clarify. The whole point was to unencrypt my home directory. I was following what I thought was pretty clear instructions from online on how to do this. Unfortunately when I moved (per the instructions) instead of copied the files from the external I lost my only unencrypted copy. When I moved it back it apparently was re-encrypted and now I can't access it. My home directory is about 600GB so copies and moves are an all day affair. – Brad Fennell Sep 07 '19 at 19:49
  • Your question does not make sense. e.g. you start by making a backup, then remove .ecryptfs. Where did that come from. You did not introduce this character into your story. then there is an empty directory, because it is being used. How dose use make it empty. Then This is probably one place I made my mistake. What is (you can't use this to refer to something that you have not yet introduced. (Oh I am starting to make sense of it now, but it is taking a LOT of effort. It needs editing, It needs to be made clearer.) – ctrl-alt-delor Sep 07 '19 at 22:05
  • Is /home/brad a separate filesystem? Usually when you delete something you don't get refused, and certainly not with a message about a directory being in use. (df -h /home/brad; what filesystem does it report?) – Chris Davies Sep 07 '19 at 23:26
  • I apologize for confusion, I’ve made it clear as I know how. I believe the inability to remove /home/brad is a result of encrypts still locking it. After a few tries from another account along with rebooting I finally deleted /home/brad. I have successfully recreated it and can now login with no evidence of ecryptfs. – Brad Fennell Sep 08 '19 at 22:15
  • I am now trying to get my data back using testdisk to undelete and restore the files from the external hard drive. Not ideal but it seemed the only way to recover. If I had only copied the backup on a the first attempt instead of moving I would be home free. Hopefully testdisk will recover most of my files. – Brad Fennell Sep 08 '19 at 22:22

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