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I recently attempted to update from 14.04 to 16.04, unfortunately my power went out and the computer shutdown breaking my installation, so I reinstalled without formatting.

I figured this would be no problem since I was able to keep the original /home/user file and I could just copy my files onto an external once a working install was running.

Sadly the new install seems to be a bit wonky as well so I am planning to just format and reinstall as soon as I am able to copy my files from the old home folder.

I've gotten as far as running:

sudo ecryptfs-recover-private /home/user

which successfully mounted the old home folder in /tmp after inputting the encryption key, or so it seems.

The problem is that when I try to launch nautilus from the terminal and view the files in the /temp/ecryptfs/xxxx to copy them, it's just the file access-your-private-data.desktop and the README file telling me to run ecryptfs-mount-private. But this always returns:

ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly

If I open the .desktop file it opens a terminal asking for login password. I enter the password then something opens and closes very rapidly then nothing.

I tried following someone's directions to setup a new user account and make it the new owner of the old /home/user, with the same result.

I have an external hd, a flash drive formated as a liveOS, and even a second comp at the ready.

How can I access my files?

Andrea Lazzarotto
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bumbling bill
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1 Answers1

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I finally did it by following the answers to this question. First, unmount whatever gvfs is. It's apparently causing problems. So for me this looked like:

umount /run/user/1000/gvfs

Now, an important oversight. You need to direct the ecryptfs recovery command not to the /home/user, but to the .Private directory! For whatever reason it says success, but is lying if you point it to the /home/user.

sudo ecryptfs-recover-private /home/.ecryptfs/user/.Private

Now you should have actual success and be able to launch nautilus and access the files

Andrea Lazzarotto
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bumbling bill
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  • here are the relevant answers I found that "cracked the case" for me, so to speak: [link]https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77453/why-cannot-find-read-run-user-1000-gvfs-even-though-it-is-running-as-root [link]http://askubuntu.com/questions/93975/recovering-ecryptfs-partition-with-ecryptfs-recover-private-not-working – bumbling bill Aug 13 '16 at 15:47
  • Well done for figuring this out, and thanks for sharing. For future note — you probably know what's coming — please do a full backup before any major update. – Paddy Landau Aug 13 '16 at 19:46