Edit - Update I have found a file with the original passphrase from the failed to upgrade 14.04, and I have also confirmed on the current 16.04 that that same passphrase exists. By using
:/home$ sudo ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase /home/lenub/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase
[sudo] password for john2: Passphrase:
{passphrase displayed}
That seems to indicate I may in fact still have the original files, but can not decrypt and mount them.
This is very similar to “sudo ecryptfs-recover-private” gives “find: ‘/run/user/1000/gvfs’: Permission denied” after botched (?) upgrade although in this case I think the files may have been lost (The related question mentioned does not have an accepted answer).
However I understand additional help questions should not be asked in an original question so I decided it seems appropriate to ask a separate question.
In my case I had 14.04 installed and tried to upgrade it to 16.04 when prompted to upgrade as a new LTS version was available. The upgrade locked up and left me with an unbootable Ubuntu. (The Lenovo laptop itself would boot as it is triple boot: Ubuntu, Puppy Linux & Windows10) I then installed 16.04 trying to keep the original home partition that took me two install attempts.
The laptop has only the one HDD. I had not even initially realised it had an encrypted Home partition. It has separate partitions for /swap /home and / I now have 16.04 successfully installed and working, and am hoping I may be able to get back the files from my 14.04 install.
If I try encryptfs-unwrap-passphrase I get an error find: ‘/run/user/1000/gvfs’: Permission denied
:~$ sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
[sudo] password for john2:
INFO: Searching for encrypted private directories (this might take a while)...
find: ‘/run/user/1000/gvfs’: Permission denied
I suspect I have in fact lost any info I may have had. The current user in the new install is "John2" the old install I would have hoped to recover will be "lenub"
/home$ sudo ls -al
total 40
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Oct 30 16:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Nov 2 09:43 ..
drwxrwxr-x 5 root root 4096 Oct 30 16:48 .ecryptfs
dr-x------ 3 john2 john2 4096 Oct 30 13:31 john
drwx------ 19 john2 john2 4096 Nov 5 16:26 john2
dr-x------ 2 john2 john2 4096 Jan 2 2016 lenub
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Jan 2 2016 lost+found
john2@john2-Lenovo-IdeaPad-N586:/home$
Looking at the file listing it is probably not likely I actually have anything that will recover.
Any one able to offer advice on where I can look, or what I can do to either to recover any files I may have, or just confirm nothing was kept and there is no point in looking further.
Annoyingly this coincided with me misplacing a memory stick that had backups on it. Probably another reminder that it is worth keeping multiple backups. (I will at least have older copies of the lost files elsewhere)
