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Here is the issue, I encrypted my installation so at boot I need to enter a passphrase. Now I want to remove this so I can resize the main drive, i have tried every possible scenario nothing works.

When I run "ecryptfs-setup-private -undo" I get "The program 'ecryptfs-> > setup-private' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils".

If this is the case then what is encrypting my drive. A newbie to Ubuntu so be gentle.

I simple want to achieve two things

  1. Completely remove the system wide encryption, and or
  2. Leave the encryption in place and re-size my boot drive by shrinking the home drive.

The explanation here is too assuming and hence complicated for a newbie, and does not address the second option.

George Udosen
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  • Is the encryption on the whole drive or on your home folder? – Alex Lowe Dec 04 '15 at 22:42
  • Its the whole drive as I have to enter a passphrase at system boot! – George Udosen Dec 04 '15 at 23:21
  • How many drives do you have in your system? – Alex Lowe Dec 04 '15 at 23:32
  • One with three partions, sda1-3! – George Udosen Dec 04 '15 at 23:44
  • There really is no way to unencrypt the drive once you have encrypted it. But you can copy all of your data from the encrypted one on to another hard drive or other partition that are not encrypted. – Alex Lowe Dec 04 '15 at 23:52
  • How would that play out with my installed apps, and can't I shrink the home directory so i can increase the size of my boot directory ? – George Udosen Dec 04 '15 at 23:58
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    Possible duplicate of Can I disable full-disk encryption? – Xen2050 Dec 05 '15 at 11:15
  • Something in your question doesn't add up: Ecryptfs doesn't provide full-disk encryption. Do you truly need to supply a key/passphrase during boot or only at login? It would help, if you provided the output of sudo lsblk -f and grep ecryptfs /proc/mounts with the encrypted partition(s) mounted. – David Foerster Dec 06 '15 at 03:08
  • Hi David, Oliver already informed me that "ecryptfs" is for home directory encryption, but mine is system wide. Remember I am new at this. I tried a link suggested by Oliver, and I did it badly and got my system downgraded to the boot level (if I am saying it right). I am in the process of re-installing most of my apps, but i was lucky I had a back-up. I should have simply followed Oliver's suggested option to re-install after copying data off, which I had to do at the end. – George Udosen Dec 07 '15 at 13:57

1 Answers1

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The command you describe (ecryptfs-setup-private) is for home directory encryption. This is another kind of encryption that just encrypts your home directory and is not the full disk type. So in your case, this is not what you have.

Your best bet is to copy the data off and reinstall. However, if you are just trying to avoid the password at boot then you can work around the problem as described here (make sure you have a backup first just in case)

http://atterer.org/linux-remove-disable-luks-encryption-password-on-disk-partition-crypttab-initrd

via an answer here:

Can I disable full-disk encryption?

Community
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  • I went for the circumvent option and my system crashed but lucky for me I had a back-up, so the copy option was my solution. Thanks Oliver, but I won't suggest the circumvent option for a newbie like me! – George Udosen Dec 07 '15 at 14:02
  • ouch! I'm glad you had that backup.

    In the long run, you'll probably be happier with the copy option.

     –  Dec 07 '15 at 16:57