Home folder not being decrypted

Question

I had an issue with .ICEauthority which I think I just managed to solve. But for some reason the system is not able to decrypt my home folder. When I run ecryptfs-mount-private I get the message "You do not own that encrypted directory". How do I fix this?

I read that it should have something to do with .ecryptfs, so I did a chown alpha:alpha .ecryptfs.

~/.ecryptfs$ ls -la
total 20
drwx------ 2 alpha alpha 4096 2010-06-27 10:02 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 alpha alpha 4096 2010-08-22 18:46 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 alpha alpha    0 2010-08-22 18:46 auto-mount
-rw-r--r-- 1 alpha alpha    0 2010-08-22 18:46 auto-umount
-rw------- 1 alpha alpha   12 2010-08-22 18:46 Private.mnt
-rw------- 1 alpha alpha   34 2010-08-22 18:46 Private.sig
-rw------- 1 alpha root    48 2010-08-22 18:46 wrapped-passphrase
-rw-r--r-- 1 alpha alpha    0 2010-08-22 19:07 .wrapped-passphrase.recorded

Should I perhaps do a chown alpha:alpha on wrapped-passphrase too?

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More on my problem with .ICEauthority: Yesterday I installed veetle (but it never worked) and today when I started my computer the desktop never "loaded". I got the standard messages saying that .ICEauthority could not be updated, nautilus could not be started and 'There is a problem with the configuration server. (/usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256)' [This was copied from internet, I do not know if the versions and status number make up but it was at least an error message involving gconf-sanity-check-2]. So I found that people had gotten the same problem when installing veetle so I assumed veetle was the cause of the problem. What I did was to remove vlc (because this should fix the issue, according to different threads). When removing vlc I got an ".ICEauthority" file (it was not there earlier) but still no desktop. This apparently was because of some permission issues so I ran chown alpha:alpha /home/alpha which made the trick - and here I am. HTH

Edit: I did actually a bit more than that, but it was mostly changing permissions here and there. For example, doing chmod 1777 /tmp (but those things never made the computer work).

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I created a new user and did ls -la /home/alpha:

/home/alpha$ ls -la
ls: cannot access .gvfs: Permission denied
total 148
drwxr-xr-x 28 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:35 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  root  4096 2011-01-24 13:25 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 alpha alpha   56 2010-08-22 18:46 Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop -> /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils/ecryptfs-mount-private.desktop
drwx------  3 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:03 .adobe
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha  449 2011-01-24 12:35 .bash_history
drwx------  7 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:35 .cache
drwx------  3 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:35 .compiz
drwxr-xr-x  8 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 13:24 .config
drwx------  3 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 10:44 .dbus
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Desktop
-rw-r--r--  1 alpha alpha   41 2011-01-24 12:35 .dmrc
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Documents
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx  1 alpha alpha   31 2010-08-22 18:46 .ecryptfs -> /home/.ecryptfs/alpha/.ecryptfs
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha   16 2011-01-24 11:48 .esd_auth
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:25 .fontconfig
drwx------  5 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:35 .gconf
drwx------  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 13:26 .gconfd
-rw-r-----  1 alpha alpha    0 2011-01-24 12:56 .gksu.lock
drwx------  8 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 13:24 .gnome2
drwx------  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 .gnome2_private
-rw-r--r--  1 alpha alpha  137 2011-01-24 12:35 .gtk-bookmarks
d?????????  ? ?     ?        ?                ? .gvfs
-rw-r--r--  1 alpha alpha 1026 2011-01-24 12:35 .ICEauthority
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha    0 2011-01-24 09:08 .ICEauthority.backup
drwx------  3 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 .local
drwx------  3 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:03 .macromedia
drwx------  4 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:50 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Music
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 .nautilus
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx  1 alpha alpha   30 2010-08-22 18:46 .Private -> /home/.ecryptfs/alpha/.Private
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Public
drwx------  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 12:27 .pulse
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha  256 2011-01-24 11:48 .pulse-cookie
lrwxrwxrwx  1 alpha alpha   52 2010-08-22 18:46 README.txt -> /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils/ecryptfs-mount-private.txt
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha  916 2011-01-24 11:53 .recently-used.xbel
-rw-r--r--  1 alpha alpha    0 2011-01-24 11:48 .sudo_as_admin_successful
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Templates
drwxrwxr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Ubuntu One
drwx------  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:51 .update-notifier
drwxr-xr-x  2 alpha alpha 4096 2011-01-24 11:49 Videos
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha 3634 2011-01-24 13:24 .xsession-errors
-rw-------  1 alpha alpha 4170 2011-01-24 12:35 .xsession-errors.old

But checking permissions by nautilus it tells me .Private is owned by "1016 - user #1016"

Answer 1

Maybe the problem comes from how you solved your ICEauthority problem? Can you expand on what the problem was and how you solved it?

Anyway, changing wrapped-passphrase's group from root to alpha won't make any difference, as the group doesn't have any permission.

Answer 2

This answer may be a little bit late, but I just encountered a very similar problem, and found a simple fix. Check the permissions of the .Private directory under /home/.ecryptfs/[user]; the mode should be 700. I'm not sure that mode 700 is exactly correct, but when the problem occurred for me, I found that the executable bit for that directory was not set, and I expect that's what prevented mounting the decrypted home directory. Of course the directory owner should be correct as well, but in my case it was.

For me, somehow the directory permissions had changed "spontaneously" while my home directory was mounted. I find that quite troubling, but at least I know what to do to fix the problem easily should it occur again.