[solved] How can I go directly from the crypt password to my desktop, bypassing username/password screen?

[pepperminty]

When I boot up my Linux Mint 19.3 computer, I first see an "sda3_crypt" blank with an Linux Mint logo and a black background. After I enter that, I then am taken to a screen where it asks for the username and password (the same password as sudo).

How can I go directly from the sda3_crypt password blank to my desktop, bypassingt he username and password screen?

[rene]

You want to automatically login. Settings -> Login Window -> Users, supply the username to autologin under Automatic Login.

[pepperminty]

Hi Rene,

thanks for your reply. I did as you said and supplied my username in the "username" blank in the "Automatic login" section of "Users" section of "Login Window".
Even after a reboot, however, I still need to enter my username and password.

When I mouse-hover over the word "Username" in the Login Window>Automatic Login section, I see a popup box that says

Warning: Automatic login will fail if the user's home directory is encrypted

When I fresh-installed Mint 19.3, I believe I have not just my home directory, but the entire SSD to be encrypted.

[rene]

Home-directory encryption is indeed incompatible with autologin: your home-directory gets encrypted with your login password (actually indirectly so, but never mind) so clearly autologin entirely defeats the purpose of home-directory encryption.

The "sda3_crypt" password enquiry you describe is indeed from full-disk encryption --- which given that unless you did creative things to split off your home directory from the "full-disk" means it entirely defeats the purpose of home-directory encryption in another way; makes it useless and wastes perfectly good CPU cycles for no reason.

That is: don't pick BOTH full-disk and home-directory encryption. If former, latter is unnecessary. Undoing latter is possible, see e.g. https://www.howtogeek.com/116179/how-to ... ng-ubuntu/ but if you're very uncomfortable using the command line, well, you could reinstall...

[pepperminty]

If I recall corectly, I didn't choose both "home-directory encryption" and "full-disk encryption". IIRC, when I did the fresh install, the installer asked me about encryption, and I chose Encrypt the entire volume/disk.

Is there a way to check which of the 2 (or whether both) encryptions I have on my computer?

[rene]

Sure. mount -t ecryptfs should show your home directory if you have home-directory encryption set up.

[pepperminty]

I run mount -t ecryptfs and see this:

/home/.ecryptfs/pepperminty/.Private on /home/pepperminty type ecryptfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=7bb7aeddfbb68224,ecryptfs_sig=206d028ef66dd709,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs)

So does this mean I have double encryption?

[rene]

Yup.

[pepperminty]

How can I undo home-disk encryption while keeping full-disk encryption? I read somewhere that it's better to have full-disk encryption, rather than home-disk encryption.

[rene]

The above "howtogeek" link runs you through it. As system-surgery goes I'd say it's top 40% so, as said, if you're not comfortable...

[pepperminty]

thanks for confirming. I'm comfortable with Terminal. Gonna run through those How2Geek steps now. thanks.

[pepperminty]

hi rene,

I'm now at the "Remove Encryption" section. I ran sudo rm -rf /home/pepperminty but it says

rm: cannot remove '/home/pepperminty': Device or resource busy

In case you're wondering, I'm logged into the temporary account I've just created a minute ago.

[pepperminty]

Nevermind. I restarted the computer and now the command works.

[pepperminty]

Nice, it works. I can go directly from crypt password to my desktop.

Thanks!

[rene]

Very nice.