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Occasionally, when I log into my Ubuntu server, the prompt says jon@jon-server:(unreachable)/$. Running pwd at this point returns (unreachable)/, however echo $HOME returns /home/jon as expected. If I cd then I get taken to my actual home folder.

What could be the reasons for this? It doesn't seem to cause any problems, apart from public key authentication with SSH (presumably if it can't see the home folder then it can't get to the .ssh folder inside it). It seems to be consistent until restart - that is, every new shell will do this, until I restart, when it will either work normally or not.

This has been happening for at least the last few release upgrades, so not related to Oneiric. I selected the installer option to encrypt my home folder.

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I do not have a solution or an explanation, but I experienced something similar, always in situations where I was using ssh and screen. – enzotib Oct 26 '11 at 6:59
@enzotib That's really interesting - I always use screen as well, I just tried quitting the whole screen session and starting a fresh one, and the 'unreachable' thing had gone away. Still no luck with public-key auth, so perhaps that's an unrelated issue – Jon M Oct 26 '11 at 7:13
I have the same issue with 11.10 and screen. Creating a new screen first results in a slight delay and then the directory in the prompt shows up as unreachable as does the output from pwd. This is my first time using an encrypted home dir and it seems related. ls shows the home dir contents, unencrypted and a simple cd clears the problem. Also, I've only seen this in a ssh session so far since that's the only way I access the machine. – mindless.panda Dec 21 '11 at 17:08
I now have this issue as well. I'm not using screen but I have ssh deamon installed. This is started to happen after I removed a DropBox. Everytime Ubuntu is asking me to "Restart Nautilus". Please help! – bakytn Dec 27 '11 at 22:18
so if you fixed this issue, please post an "Answer" here – bakytn Dec 27 '11 at 22:19
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up vote 3 down vote

The question and answer for Is it possible to use the 'screen' command to work with files on an encrypted home directory? helped me understand why this might be happening: being logged in via screen with ssh doesn't tell Ubuntu that you're still using the system and so after a while (overnight in my case) the encrypted home directory gets unmounted, so Vim can't save files it had open in screens, and the working directory on the command prompt becomes (unreachable).

I know that the problem goes away if I have an NX session logged in. NX might be described as screen for GUI; I just start an NX session and disconnect it (letting it run the background), and can continue using ssh/screen indefinitely. Not elegant or ideal but I use NX occasionally so it worked for me.

The linked question also suggests deleting the empty file in /home/.ecryptfs/$USER/.ecryptfs/auto-umount. This might help if you don't use NX.

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up vote 1 down vote

"I selected the installer option to encrypt my home folder."

I'd say that may be your answer, I may have this slightly incorrect as I don't use ecryptFS on any machines that I'm not using logged in a normal environment. But I think it may have something to do with your home directory being encrypted, thus its contents aren't available, unless you're either logged in physically on the machine's console, or you've specifically mounted/decrypted the home directory contents.

If you go to /home/jon is all your content there, or a README.txt and small .desktop link to help you start the decryption/mounting process?

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I thought that too, but all my content is there, even when I'm at the 'unreachable' prompt, so it's definitely getting decrypted and mounted. – Jon M Nov 1 '11 at 7:57

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