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?
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).
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"