54

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 a few days ago but strangely I seem to have skipped the part about choosing to encrypt home folder. Now if it is encrypted I do not know what is the encryption key. How do I check if it is really encrypted? (and also the swap partition).

Neptunno
  • 2,214
  • 1
    related question -> http://askubuntu.com/questions/17216/how-can-i-determine-if-just-the-private-folder-is-encrypted-or-the-whole-home-d – hhlp Jun 04 '12 at 20:56
  • You probably could have recovered the passphrase using ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase or ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase /path/to/wrapped-passphrase (if the automatically created "wrapped-passphrase" file had not been deleted), see http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man1/ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase.1.html.

    NB: When ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase asks for your passphrase, enter the user's password.

     – lmeurs Aug 24 '15 at 12:08

2 Answers2

69

Open terminal and type ls -A /home. There should be a .ecryptfs folder, if you have encryption of your home folder.

Martin Ueding
  • 8,348
  • 1
    Thanks. That's exactly what I needed. I do have .ecryptfs folder. So my home folder is encrypted. – Neptunno Jun 04 '12 at 21:08
  • Also there is a related question regarding swap partition, http://askubuntu.com/questions/53242/check-if-partition-is-encrypted My swap is encrypted as well. – Neptunno Jun 04 '12 at 21:09
  • 9
    ...so Eve's mkdir ~/.ecryptfs (or tar xf files-expected-on-an-encrypted-home.tgz) would make Alice believe her home is safely encrypted, while it actually isn't? – LSerni Apr 20 '15 at 13:29
  • 1
    @Iserni: Indeed! I think one should rather look through mount then. I haven't thought about that before. – Martin Ueding May 09 '16 at 15:53
  • You do not want to list contents of the current directory, so please exclude the . from the command. – jarno May 08 '19 at 12:37
  • @jarno: I think the formatting was just wrong and that it should be the period in the sentence. I have fixed that. – Martin Ueding May 09 '19 at 09:55
  • to check your home you could also do mount | grep /home and you'll get something like /home/.ecryptfs/your-username/.Private on /home/your-username type ecryptfs ... – Rodrigo Oct 07 '20 at 16:05
18

This is how to check if swap partition is encrypted:

sudo blkid | grep swap

and should check for an output similar to

/dev/mapper/cryptswap1: UUID="95f3d64d-6c46-411f-92f7-867e92991fd0" TYPE="swap"

If instead of cryptswap1 there is something like a usual drive (e.g. /dev/sda4) then swap area is not encrypted.

Jorge Castro
  • 71,754
Neptunno
  • 2,214