I had my home folder encrypted during installation by checking "Encrypt my home folder".
Now, I'd like to reinstall the system, but reuse this home folder.
(I have 2 separate partitions for /
and /home
. The former is formatted during the reinstall, the later - unformatted and reused. Been using this method without encryption for years - no issues.)
It seems that Ubuntu does not take care of it automatically.
Removing encryption and encrypting everything once more sounds incredibly workaroundish. Depending on how you perform it, it could also leave out temporary unencrypted data ready to be recovered with recovery tools. Even when discarded after the migration process.
[Meta] Possible duplicate:
To all of folks that suggest that this is a duplicate of Why can I not deselect "encrypt my home folder"?:
Well, yes. That thread resolved my problem.
However, I did some research prior to posting this (which I always do) and the answer was nowhere to be found.
That's because I never saw the bloody form with encryption options disabled.
That's because I did some thinking on 'How will I migrate my encrypted $HOME
?' before I actually got down to reinstalling and potentially carelessly loosing my data. 1
I sincerely hope there's more like-minded, precautious folk out there (if not, humanity is doomed).
IMO they will find this doubt reworded as "Reusing encrypted home …" helpful.
That's my opinion, however, it's up to you what you do with this thread.
After all, the reputation score is the ultimate measure of one's right.
Isn't it?
1: Yes, I do have a backup. Still, why resorting to backup when you can easily preserve your original data?
dd
,shreader
or other freespace erasing program over the partition that had the unencrypted data after you have completed your migration and deleted the files. Overwriting the drive will prevent recovery