I have a user, say secretuser, with an encrypted home directory. Unfortunately I forgot the password for user secretuser, because it was very secret. So I loggged on with another admin user, say masteruser, and changed the password for secretuser via graphical UI to, say, 'newpass'. When trying to login as secretuser, there was no "wrong password" or so when I use 'newpass', but I am sent back to the graphical logon screen immediately after some flash of the screen. So I logged on again as masteruser and did in a shell window:
masteruser$ su secretuser
I entered 'newpass' at the prompt and was able to log on to a shell. But still graphical login was not possible. Same effect as before. So I concluded that the graphical dialog does not do it's job completely and gave the command prompt a chance:
masteruser$ sudo passwd secretuser
Of course, I had to change to something else, say 'newpass1'. Unfortunately, the graphical login shows the same issue as before, but now, when I su
'ed to secretuser, I only saw an encrypted file system.
masteruser@zhadum:~$ su secretuser
Passwort: newpass1
Signature not found in user keyring
Perhaps try the interactive 'ecryptfs-mount-private'
secretuser@zhadum:/home/masteruser$ cd /home/secretuser
secretuser@zhadum:~$ ls
Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop README.txt
secretuser@zhadum:~$
Maybe I took security a bit too far, because now I am completely stuck. Seemingly the password is changed, but it does not work for the graphical login and also not for the decryption of the user's directory. Trying ecryptfs-mount-private
as suggested did not work either, because neither 'newpass' nor 'newpass1' were accepted. Dropping and recreating the user would lose me 3 weeks of work because the most recent backup, shame on me, is not too current.
Do I have a chance to get access again?
Update: Thanks to the link given by @mxdsp I tried:
masteruser@zhadum:~$ sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
[sudo] password for masteruser: ----
INFO: Searching for encrypted private directories (this might take a while)...
INFO: Found [/home/.ecryptfs/secretuser/.Private].
Try to recover this directory? [Y/n]:
INFO: Found your wrapped-passphrase
Do you know your LOGIN passphrase? [Y/n] Y
INFO: Enter your LOGIN passphrase...
Passphrase: newpass1
Error: Unwrapping passphrase and inserting into the user session keyring failed [-5]
Info: Check the system log for more information from libecryptfs
masteruser@zhadum:~$ cd /var/log
masteruser@zhadum:/var/log$ tail syslog
Oct 9 06:05:19 zhadum ecryptfs-insert-wrapped-passphrase-into-keyring: Incorrect wrapping key for file [/home/.ecryptfs/secretuser/.Private/../.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase]
Oct 9 06:05:19 zhadum ecryptfs-insert-wrapped-passphrase-into-keyring: Error attempting to unwrap passphrase from file [/home/.ecryptfs/secretuser/.Private/../.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase]; rc = [-5]
Oct 9 06:05:21 zhadum wpa_supplicant[1625]: nl80211: send_and_recv->nl_recvmsgs failed: -33
and also:
masteruser@zhadum:/var/log$ sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
INFO: Searching for encrypted private directories (this might take a while)...
INFO: Found [/home/.ecryptfs/secretuser/.Private].
Try to recover this directory? [Y/n]: Y
INFO: Found your wrapped-passphrase
Do you know your LOGIN passphrase? [Y/n] n
INFO: To recover this directory, you MUST have your original MOUNT passphrase.
INFO: When you first setup your encrypted private directory, you were told to record
INFO: your MOUNT passphrase.
INFO: It should be 32 characters long, consisting of [0-9] and [a-f].
Enter your MOUNT passphrase: byebye secretuser...
I guess I am done now. I now go grieving over my dumbassery and then ask another question how to truly remove the 32 GB of secretuser from my harddisk - to make sure not to leave even more mess...