I recently forgot my user password from a relatively fresh Ubuntu 13.04 installation (dual-boot with Windows 7, latter more heavily used). During setup, I had selected the encrypted home directory option but unfortunately skipped the step asking me to record a passphrase.
I managed to set a new password for my account by booting into single-user mode, but as described in "can't login after password change (ecryptfs)", I am thrown back to the login manager when trying to use my new password. The answer to aforesaid question linked me to Annoyance changing password with Ecryptfs, which suggests running ecryptfs-mount-private
, but unfortunately that merely returns ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not set up properly
.
Does Ecryptfs set a default passphrase in such instances, or if not, is there any other way to recover my data? (Said data largely consists of a few saved image files and Oolite savestates, so I wouldn't mind a total loss that much … but it's the principle that matters here.) If not, would the easiest way to get a usable system again be a partition wipe and reinstall? (In this case I would probably want to delete the single partition set by Ubuntu setup and define multiple partitions myself ― advice on what amount of swap space is recommended on a 64Bit system with 8GB RAM would be welcome.)
ecryptfs-verify -p