Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

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DennyOX

Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by DennyOX »

Hello,
I need help getting access to my home. I'm using newly installed Mint 19 on a btrfs file system, which is corrupted & I want to wipe it. (And never use btrfs again.) It will not boot. I tried booting into repair mode & it froze. So, I booted it on a Mint 19 install flash drive. I can access the file system, which is not corrupt via /media/a4/ etc. But the home folder containing the link to the app to apparently put in my password does nothing when clicked. I went to the exec file & dragged it to the terminal as root, but just get an error command not found. As root I enteredecryptfs=mount=private & get "root@mint:/media/a4/@home/me#" and nothing more. What can I do?

I got most of my data off the btrfs partition before it crashed & burned but would like to get what's left if possible. thanks much
DennyOX
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Pierre
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Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by Pierre »

well - at least you managed to get most of that data off the btrfs partition before it crashed & burned,,
but - what method of encryption did you select on that initial installation ?.

when, booting with that LM18 media, do you see lots of files, or just the one large file ?.
& if there is lots of smaller files - can you copy there ? or is there an error, when doing that ?.

and what interface, are you using, when entering that password, for the encryption ?.

Finally, from that LM19 media, can you use the program Gparted,
to grab a screen_shot of the HDD & paste that back here, on your next reply . ...
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DennyOX

Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by DennyOX »

Thanks Pierre,
I'm not sure I understand the many small files vs. one large one question. I mounted the partition to /media in the Mint 19 install boot, went into that & can see all the system files & access them. When I open the /home all I get is the links I mentioned, which do nothing when clicked. I don't see a whole lot of small files there. At the terminal I see only home/myname then Access-your-jPrivate -Data.desktop & Readme. The link does nothing when clicked. Not sure otherwise.

gparted 4 partitions,
boot loader
sda1 NTFS bootloader 1GB
sda2 ntfs Windows 25GB
sda4 btrfs Linux 190GB contains / & /home; / is not encrypted;
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Pierre
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Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2008 5:33 am
Location: Perth, AU.

Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by Pierre »

it does seem that the sda4 btrfs Linux is really broken,
and that you may have to do a lot of reading, of what is required to repair that btrfs Linux system.

this will be a lot of work for you, and may not really be that successful, either.
:(

you could have a crack at repairing that btrfs Linux system & treat the whole exercise an an Learning Experience,
but with the view to eventually replacing that btrfs Linux system with an New Ext4 File System.
8)
you could also take this opportunity, to re-work your File System into something more useful:
- replace that SDA4 with 2 -3 partitions & then use the 'something else' option in the LinuxMint Installer.
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Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] - when your problem is solved!
and DO LOOK at those Unanswered Topics - - you may be able to answer some!.
DennyOX

Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by DennyOX »

I'm going to dump the entire install & reinstall using ext4. People should be warned that btrfs is not ready. I've read that if you try to use the btrfs file system repair command it could ruin your file system & make it permanently unrecoverable. Also I've had endless crashes since I installed it because of problems with the swapfile. No mention in the install docs anywhere about not using a swap partition. Just a mess.
Anyway, right now I only want to try to save the little bit of personal data on it. Trying to see if there is any way to access it. thanks
WharfRat

Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by WharfRat »

When booted to the live media, mount the partition to /mnt and enter these one lin at a time

Change wharfrat to your user name in the third line

Code: Select all

sudo -i

export envvars='opts fnek fnek_sig d sigs mount_sig mount_opts tmpdir'

for o in $envvars;do export "$o=";done; opts=ro;tmpdir=/tmp/mine

d=$(find /mnt/home/.ecryptfs/wharfrat -type d -name ".Private") && echo "$d"   #replace wharfrat with the user's /home folder name

ls "$d/ECRYPTFS_FNEK_ENCRYPTED"* >/dev/null 2>&1 && fnek="--fnek" || fnek=

ecryptfs-insert-wrapped-passphrase-into-keyring "$d/../.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase"  # Enter the user's password when prompted
Do you get prompted for your password :?:
DennyOX

Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by DennyOX »

ya it returned a ton of files but nothing related to audio. almost all was to my Mathematica stuff.
DennyOX

Re: Need help accessing encrypted home on corrupted drive

Post by DennyOX »

scratch that. I'm responding to two different threads concerning different issues.
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