How to decrypt encrypted home folder?

[surfer]

the program that encrypts your home folder is called eCryptFS. i strongly doubt that you will find a windows driver for it. haven't looked for it though... maybe you're lucky.

[binarylife]

[QUOTE=surfer;10148818]the program that encrypts your home folder is called eCryptFS. i strongly doubt that you will find a windows driver for it. haven't looked for it though... maybe you're lucky.[/QUeeeOTE]

How to do it ??
Thanks

[surfer]

google?

[surfer]

by the way: your home directory is not encrypted with your password; the password encrypts the key that is really used to encrypt the files and directories.

on ubuntu, the relevant tools are:

ecryptfs-add-passphrase
ecryptfs-insert-wrapped-passphrase-into-keyring
ecryptfs-manager
ecryptfs-migrate-home
ecryptfs-mount-private
ecryptfs-rewrap-passphrase
ecryptfs-rewrite-file
ecryptfs-setup-private
ecryptfs-setup-swap
ecryptfs-stat
ecryptfs-umount-private
ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase
ecryptfs-wrap-passphrase

the manpages will tell you what they are for.

[clivejo]

If your user account name is "user"

1)

sudo ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase /home/user/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase

Enter your account password for the user account, this will then display the encryption key, take a note of this key, if the user account password is wrong you won't be able to retrieve the key.

2)

sudo ecryptfs-add-passphrase --fnek

Enter the key you retrieved in step 1. This will insert two auth tok with sig. Take a note of the second key.

3)

sudo mount -t ecryptfs /home/user/.Private /home/user/Private

• Enter your key (Noted in step one)
• Select: aes (use the aes cipher)
• Select: 16 (use a 16 byte key)
• Enable plaintext passthrough: n
• Enable filename encryption: y )
• Filename Encryption Key (FNEK) Signature: (Enter the key noted in step 2)
• Since you are using superuser privileges instead of your regular user account, you may get a warning that you might have entered the passphrase wrong, even if you didn't. Continue the mount operation and don't save the key if it asks.

Assuming you entered your key correctly, you should be able to temporarily access your data at /home/user/Private

Good luck

[ubu-for]

Assuming you entered your key correctly, you should be able to temporarily access your data at /home/user/Private

Thank you so much!

[86themachine]

Thanks clivejo this was very helpful for me. I think your instructions should include making a directory for "Private" to mount to.

In order for this to work don't you need to make a directory named Private to mount to?

sudo mkdir /home/user/Private

[repelsteel]

[QUOTE=binarylife;10148913]

the program that encrypts your home folder is called eCryptFS. i strongly doubt that you will find a windows driver for it. haven't looked for it though... maybe you're lucky.[/QUeeeOTE]

How to do it ??
Thanks

hi binarylife,
i had a ssd in my netbook with linux mint 12 on it and with an encrypted home-dir like yourself from the initial installation menu. So i know my password.
Now my OS wont boot anymore so i booted a livedvd for mint 12 and with that i tried to access the old home-dir.
1. attach an external harddisk
2. in terminal cd to the encrypted home-dir: cd /media/whatever/home/user
3. sudo ecryptfs-recover-private (NOT eNcrypt......)
4. give your passsword
5. the home-dir will be copied to /tmp/xxxxxx
Now, nautilus file manager and the terminal cant access the copied dir and I am not sure what to do now but this worked for me:
6. sudo nautilus
7. with this 'root-nautilus' i can access the copied home-dir and copy all the files from there to the external harddisk

note: i believe it is not a smart policy to keep using nautilus with 'sudo', so only use it for this incident

Does this help?

[happy.camper]

Thanks a LOT clivejo, your post saved me so much time!