fresh install with encrypted home partition
 

Hi all. When I setup ubuntu the first time I selected "encrypt home partition" but didnt mess with it further...i dont believe the unwrap command worked properly after installing. So now I'm trying to do a fresh install but on the live cd my home directory doesnt mount. When I try to mount it it says ecryptfs isnt setup properly. How do I do a fresh install and keep my home partition intact and mounted properly?

well i decided to go ahead with the install. I booted back into jaunty, ran ecryptfs-add-passphrase to make sure the right password was set then went back into the livecd installer. I mounted the previous home partition as home and selected "password required to decrypt and mount". I set the username and password to what it was before. Now unfortunately when I boot I get all sorts of errors, ctrl alt f1, login, ls ~ shows the access-your-private-data.desktop and readme.txt. I try to ecryptfs-mount-private and it says "ecrypted home not setup properly" or some such error and fails. FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-
Someone with ecryptfs knowledge please tell me how I recover from this! I backed up /var/lib/ecryptfs from jaunty as well (dunno if that's needed or not because I clearly have no idea what i'm doing) HELP ME PLEASE!!!

edit: tried creating a new user to try to get some form of useable desktop but this one is encrypted as well and wont mount. So now I have a completely unusable system and all my personal data I cant get to

Yeah, I'm having the same problem. Can anyone help us fix this?

I don't think encryption is perfect YET in Ubuntu
 

Taken From: http://bodhizazen.net/Tutorials/Ecryptfs/

Using Ecryptfs with a separate /home partition

One downside of encryption is that using a separate /home partition is more difficult and there are as of yet no automated tools on the installation CD (alternate or desktop) to automatically preserve and configure your Ecryptfs encrypted /home directories.

I advise you back up your data, install, then restore your data.

So this goes for both of us man.

Just backup your encrpyted home and consider this a bad day!
 

To backup your data, read this solution:

Mount Your Encrypted Home From a LIVECD:

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/...home-from.html

oops, posted what I did to solve this over at ubuntuforums but didnt here
I noticed when I did ls -al in my home besides the two files there was also a symlink to /var/lib/ecryptfs (which is weird because I thought /var/lib/ecryptfs was gone in karmic so I didnt even think of it earlier). All I did was put my backed up /var/lib/ecryptfs back where it was, rebooted and VOILA! Access to all my files! Just make sure the user/pass is the same and you should be good to go. Certainly frustrating though: you'd think if they included this in the system it would be better supported (especially when it can cause such a catastrophic loss of data when some obscure folder that isnt really mentioned anywhere isnt backed up). Hell I still dont think I have ecryptfs setup properly but hey at least it works