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I had a simple password for years! Yesterday I changed my password to a stronger one, but I forgot it. So I used recovery mode and changed my password. After that, I couldn't login to my account. It returned to the login page. So I reinstalled Ubuntu. ( It's in another hard drive so my home folder is safe and unchanged. ) But login loop was there. So I reset .ICEauthority and I can login to my account now. But the problem is my home folder is encrypted and now I can't see my files. ( I know my last login password and I know my passphrase, too, and I have used them before to decrypt the data. ) Now : When I click on Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop nothing happens.

mahdiar@mahdiar-ubuntu-pc:~$  ecryptfs-mount-private
ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly

mahdiar@mahdiar-ubuntu-pc:~$     sudo ecryptfs-recover-private ~/.ecryptfs/mahdiar/.Private
[sudo] password for mahdiar: 
INFO: Found [/home/mahdiar/.ecryptfs/mahdiar/.Private].
Try to recover this directory? [Y/n]: 
INFO: Found your wrapped-passphrase
Do you know your LOGIN passphrase? [Y/n] 
INFO: Enter your LOGIN passphrase...
Passphrase: 
Error: Unwrapping passphrase and inserting into the user session keyring failed [-5]
Info: Check the system log for more information from libecryptfs

+++ 14-7-2017

I remember that first I changed my password graphically and when I forget it I use passwd to change it . So should I use that forgotten password ?

I know 9 characters of password . Maybe 4 or 5 first characters are forgotten .

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  • What does the system log say?
    – Kaz Wolfe
    Jul 10, 2017 at 0:25
  • If you can let us know a little more about what the logs say in response to the error, it would help. I would give a try to romed's answer and post the results.
    – ben-Nabiy Derush
    Jul 13, 2017 at 15:17
  • Please read my new edition of question.
    – mahdiar
    Jul 14, 2017 at 6:26
  • What's the output of ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase after you enter your old passphrase? Do you get any info, warning, or error messages or is it just a random looking string of characters? (Don't tell us the latter obviously.)
    – David Foerster
    Jul 14, 2017 at 7:05
  • Passphrase: Error: Unwrapping passphrase failed [-5] Info: Check the system log for more information from libecryptfs
    – mahdiar
    Jul 14, 2017 at 7:07

3 Answers 3

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+25

Maybe this answer helps you: Unwrapping passphrase and inserting into the user session keyring failed

I suspect that your passphrase has been wrapped using the "strong password" you could not remember. However, if you have your unwrapped Passphrase at hand, you could directly use it in the sudo mount -t ecryptfs command as in the referred question.

If that works, you can at least get your data out.

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  • Just so we don't mix things up here: when i say unwrapped passphrase, i mean that lengthy hex code which is given to you upon the encryption has been set up in the beginning. It should look a bit like this: 116b053e08564b53b2967e64e509bdc5 If you have such a passphrase, you can mount your private data without knowing the login password (see link above).
    – romed
    Jul 14, 2017 at 7:49
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Unless you have the unwrapped password, there is very little you can do. If you have a backup, then you can restore your files. If there was a way to recover the files without knowing the password, then everyone would be able to do that which would be a big security risk.

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From how I understand the sequence of events, you couldn't remember the previous passphrase.

  • If you can't remember the passphrase then you can't unlock the volume encryption key with ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase.
  • If you don't have a copy of the unwrapped volume key (or one wrapped with a passphrase that you remember) you can't decrypt the volume.

If you still know most of the lost passphrase or its pattern you could use word list generator to create a word list based on that and try to find the right one to decrypt the volume. Other than that the encrypted data is inaccessible.

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  • Thanks . I know my old password . I found a way to use login password to encrypt but it doesn't work
    – mahdiar
    Jul 14, 2017 at 4:04

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