{SOLVED} How locked is encrypted

[dehawkinz]

I know this may seem a odd question, and definitely a case of cart horse bolted and looking at stable locks now, but I was going to ask anyway

I have multiple installations of Linux on my pc
Currently I have
Linux Mint 18 MATE 32-bit
Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon 32-bit
Linux UberStudent 32-bit

At present none of them are encrypted, one reason being that I tend to cross-access them - eg read files in UberStudent from Linux Mint 18. I understand that encrypting after the event is more tricky than encrypting when installing, but going forward - if I encrypt the /home folder can I still access it from outside if I have the password?
example: I install Mint 19 and encrypt the /home folder, would I be able to access it from Mint 18 with the right password?

[WharfRat]

example: I install Mint 19 and encrypt the /home folder, would I be able to access it from Mint 18 with the right password?

The simple answer to your question is yes, but not just with the password.

An encrypted /home has to be mounted with mount.ecryptfs and requires a wrapped-passphrase file located in /home/.ecryptfs/$USER along with the user's password.

You could use ecryptfs-recover-private which will mount the encrypted /home to a temporary randomly generated folder name in /tmp.

[dehawkinz]

OK, gotcha

thanks