Ubuntu: Restore your encrypted home directory
From Tomelec
Contents
What you need
- A running Ubuntu
- Access to the disk from which you want to restore
- Your user password of the system you want to restore from OR the passphrase you might have recorded earlier
How it works
Mount the disk or partition with the encrypted home on it
It can be done with Nautilus or on the text console. Change to the directory with the encrypted home which might look like that:
user@ubuntu:/media/my_disk/home/.ecryptfs/username$
Optional: Get the passphrase
The passphrase is not the user password. It is a random key, stored in the file wrapped-passphrase and encrypted with the user´s password. It´s unlikely that you´ve got that passphrase writen down somewhere but if you do so, skip that step. Else unwrap it:
user@ubuntu:/media/my_disk/home/.ecryptfs/username$ ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase .ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase Passphrase: <enter user´s password here> 2dac479b16e0efd2ac7b8e9e7690f8f7
This got us the passphrase, for exmple 2dac479b16e0efd2ac7b8e9e7690f8f7.
