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1. What will happen when upgrading Ubuntu 17.10 with encrypted /home to Ubuntu 18.04?

Bionic Beaver Release Notes

Other base system changes since 16.04 LTS:

The installer no longer offers the encrypted home option using ecryptfs-utils. It is recommended to use full-disk encryption instead for this release. Launchpad Bug #1756840

2. Will 18.04 be able to use encrypted (ecryptfs) /home ?

edit: 3 is now a standalone Question

user58634
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  • By fscrypt do you mean ecryptfs? Upgrading to 18.04 shouldn't disable/remove encrypted home. – dobey Apr 13 '18 at 17:59
  • Backup at least all data, that you cannot afford to lose, before you start upgrading to a new version. – sudodus Apr 13 '18 at 18:31
  • On questions 1 and 2: I have upgraded from 17.10 to 18.04 with ecryptfs home dirs and there was no problem. On question 3: fscrypt is in the repository, but I have no experience with this. – Martin W Apr 13 '18 at 18:33
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    See also this answer. – Redsandro May 03 '18 at 11:20
  • You might want to read my response at: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029249/how-to-encrypt-home-on-ubuntu-18-04/1033829#1033829 – Mr. Cypherpunk May 09 '18 at 02:38
  • My installation of 18.04.3 LTS does not recognize the /home directory previously encrypted and recognized in release 14 and 16. At this point in time, I am facing the problem of importing this directory in the new OS. – XavierStuvw Aug 21 '19 at 08:23

2 Answers2

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I did a trial install of 18.04 Beta Lubuntu on a system with an encrypted home. This system has separate / and /home partitions, so I was doing a "Something Else" install, formatting and installing to /, and not touching /home.

Every other time I've done this (with older versions of the installer) on the screen where you put in your username, at the bottom 3 options appeared, one of which was "encrypt your home directory" or words to that effect. This option was always ticked and grayed out (because the installer knew that the home directory was encrypted). This didn't happen this install - the option was not offered at all- and when the install was complete, I couldn't log in.

To fix this, I had to reboot, switch to a terminal login (Ctrl+Alt+F1), and install ecryptfs-utils. Another reboot and I could log in.

There was another user on the same PC with a different encrypted home. I could never manage to log in that account. I finally deleted the user, re-added them with encrypted home, and reloaded their home directory from backup.

This was all quite a hassle and I probably won't be encrypting home directories any more.

abu_bua
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Organic Marble
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It is not offered as a default option. It is still supported, and ecryptfs is available. You can't set it up during normal install.

It will be possible to use old /home folders encrypted with ecryptfs, and you can manually create new.

As always, a good backup is recommended, especially when upgrading a system..

vidarlo
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