remove home dir encryption?

[i.r.id10t]

Buddy gave a box to my kids, I'm sharing it too. Normally do my own installs, so I'm sure his is different ...

Basically, a while back I was prompted to write down an encryption key for my home dir. Did that, but now...

Moving a buch of data (mp3 files) from one directory (my home) to another, on the same ext3 partition. Taking forever (2gb...) I'm assuming that it has to decrypt everything on the fly and then move the fs pointer. On unencrypted stuff on all of my other linux boxes (lots), a move to somewhere else on the same partition is instant.

So... how can I remove (permamently) the encrypt home directory setting/option and permamently decrypt my home dir?

Thanks!

[staeiou]

I'd like to know this too. Thanks!

[i.r.id10t]

Never got a response, so I just reinstalled...

[nyhm]

I just created this forum user account to ask this very question:

How to remove home dir encryption?

I've used Debian for years, but brand new to Ubuntu (9.10). Any information greatly appreciated.

[FuturePilot]

ecryptfs-setup-private --undo

will tell you what you need to do.

[nyhm]

FuturePilot, thank you for your reply. That command is for removing the ~/.Private ecryptfs mounted directory. I would like to remove the encryption on my $HOME dir itself, which I (rashly) chose during install.

One option may be to backup the home directory contents (in non-encrypted form), delete the user (and home dir), then create a new user without the encrypted home dir.

Is that the only way?

[FuturePilot]

FuturePilot, thank you for your reply. That command is for removing the ~/.Private ecryptfs mounted directory. I would like to remove the encryption on my $HOME dir itself, which I (rashly) chose during install.

One option may be to backup the home directory contents (in non-encrypted form), delete the user (and home dir), then create a new user without the encrypted home dir.

Is that the only way?

It works the same way for an encrypted $HOME. Just apply the instructions but use your $HOME directory instead of Private.

Basically, backup your data, unmount your encrypted home, make your home directory writable, and then delete /home/.ecryptfs/$USER (if you're the only user with an encrypted home, you can probably just delete the whole /home/.ecryptfs), restore your data back to /home/$USER.

[nyhm]

Oh, nice! Thanks for the clarification. I expected there to be something to configure with the login system. Does login simply skip the ecryptfs-mount step if there is no /home/.ecryptfs/$USER dir?

[FuturePilot]

Oh, nice! Thanks for the clarification. I expected there to be something to configure with the login system. Does login simply skip the ecryptfs-mount step if there is no /home/.ecryptfs/$USER dir?

Yes. You don't need to modify anything with the login system.

[paradigm2]

Does anyone have a source of UPDATED documentation on ecryptfs only for 9.10? I'm finding all the old information confusing and actually quite dangerous since it doesn't always apply or isn't even always necessary to do what is suggested.

I'd like to be able to read up on things, answer some of my own questions, and generally understand what is going on with the encryption more.

Apologies for adding this to the thread but it is somewhat related (people ask these questions in part due to the lack of recent accessible documentation) and I didn't want to start yet another thread. Thanks.