Update: I ran the commands and It 100% worked!

I ran through the possibilities and tried to find fault in the reasoning behind the commands, couldn’t really find any flaws, and the only thing I thought could have gotten in the way of it working seems from my research not to have any reason to be so…

Anyway, it worked! I have full access to the old user and all its files and settings and stuff, and everything seems to be neat and accounted for and such.

Thanks again (again) for all your help!

As an expansion on my previous comment,

Would running these commands in this order return the original user to the state that it was in before I changed its username?

sudo mv /home/magentausername/oldhome-backup/redusername /home (To move the encrypted homedir back into /home)

sudo chown -R redusername /home/redusername (To give ownership of said homedir back to redusername)

sudo usermod -l blueusername -d /home/blueusername -m redusername (To change the user’s username (redusername) back to blueusername, make a new directory called /home/blueusername, and move the contents of the encrypted homedir to said new directory*)

sudo groupmod -n blueusername redusername (To change the user’s group’s name back to blueusername)

(*That is, assuming it’d still have the same path set as the original user’s homedir?)

(I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do next if you don’t reply to this comment… Idk what other options there’d be except for just winging it and hoping it does work like that or making another post asking if it would and quoting / linking to all the context or something, idk)

Hey, just wanted to give you an update on how it went (and also ask another question).

I basically just did steps 2 and 3 of the [HOWTO: Recover files from encrypted ecryptfs home directory] guide and got the FNEK key, which I then used to complete the mounting process, which worked, and mounted the encrypted homedir successfully!

I’ve copied most of the files to another location, leaving some that’ll take a while to copy over.

Thanks again for all your help!

Also though, I had a thought; wouldn’t it be neater if I just reversed the steps that lead to the original problem? Or rather, could I simply do so?

As in, (after (or before?) giving ownership back to the original username (blue), and moving the homedir back to its original place) could I just reverse the steps in the linuxuprising guide, changing the username back to what It was originally?

I’d then have more convenient access to all the files, and could from there go ahead with making a new user and moving stuff over to it, while being able to reboot or shut down the PC without then having to go through the mount process again and such.

What do you think? (Would that work?)

If you’re not gonna answer the questions or explain why you can’t help or whatever I’ll just give up I guess.

Anyway, I went and ran through the selection prompts, winging it and putting in the values I presume to be the ones used, and found that I do in fact seem to need the FNEK, which is obtained in step 3 of the guide. It seems relatively easy and straightforward to obtain, so I’ll just do that later, input it where prompted, and see where that goes.

Thanks anyway

But what do you mean by “Your notes and questions aren’t making sense”? If you don’t understand any of what I’m asking, feel free to ask me what I mean, or point out something that doesn’t make sense. You’re allowed to ask questions yourself, you know.

Uh… Ok

Does that mean you don’t know what the guide is talking about? The bits I recognise as seeming to be outputs from the terminal asking one to select an option though… Surely I need to know what to select when those come up? For instance I can decipher that presumably these selection prompts will appear during the process:

Select key bytes:

1. 16

2. 32

3. 24

Enable plaintext passthrough (y/n) [n]:

Enable filename encryption (y/n) [n]:

The guide selects 16 for the key bytes, n for “Enable plaintext passthrough”, and y for “Enable filename encryption”

What am I supposed to select when/if these prompts appear?

Do the options selected have to match the ones used originally?

With the y/n prompts, does the “[n]” in each mean that is the default? If so, that would presumably have been used originally, and thus should it be my selection…?

Then, is there also a default key bytes value that would have been auto-selected during setup?

I’m not really sure what “🤷” exactly means in this context, given the amount of variability as to what you may be shrugging about specifically, and the nature and context of the situation

Idk if that means you have absolutely no idea what I should do here or not

The main point here, and my main question, is as follows:

At the line where one would input a number from 1 to 6 to make a selection, “aes” is placed where I’d assume the inputted number would be, and then a sentence starts abruptly at the end of that word

"

Selection [aes]: aesNavigate to the target file or folder

Right click the file or folder

"

And it then follows as a series of instructions

Is this a part of the guide?? Is this an output from the terminal??

As in, there is a great deal more text below the “Select cipher:” block in the code section of step 4. It doesn’t just go straight to “Mounted eCryptfs”.

Much of said text seems like it must be additional steps in the process, either as text the terminal will output or as text the author of the guide has inserted into the code box. Otherwise what is it? It would seem odd for the terminal to just output it as non-interactive information while processing and mounting the drive, given that it seems to be a series of instructions, as I said.

[from the code box in step 4 of [HOWTO: Recover files from encrypted ecryptfs home directory]:]

Selection [aes]: aesNavigate to the target file or folder

Right click the file or folder

Select Properties

Click on the Permissions tab

Click on the Access files in the Others section

Select key bytes:

1[)] 16https://images.examples.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Travel-Packing-Check-List.pdf.zip

2[)] 32

3[)] 24

[-] Enter your [b]Mount Passphrase[/b] when p

Selection [16]: 16

Enable plaintext passthrough (y/n) [n]: n

Enable filename encryption (y/n) [n]: y

Filename Encryption Key (FNEK) Signature [3c4b10f3dcadf302]: 0d690d0b3dafaee3

I intend to run the command again and try selecting aes in hope that that’s what it would’ve used, however I’m still really unclear on the guide… look at the code section of step 4–

At the line where one would input a number from 1 to 6 to make a selection, “aes” is placed where I’d assume the inputted number would be, and then a sentence starts abruptly at the end of that word

"

Selection [aes]: aesNavigate to the target file or folder

Right click the file or folder

"

And it then follows as a series of instructions

Is this a part of the guide?? Is this an output from the terminal??

Since I can’t access the internet on my mint instance (for other technical reasons) and I haven’t set up hibernation, I have to quit the process to return to my windows instance in order to ask another question or query a search engine.

(When the terminal starts doing more active processes, killing said processes to return to my windows instance seems like it easily has potential to break something important, so…)

I just want to make sure I’m clear on the actual steps that have to be completed before running the command again.

What additional steps follow after selecting a cipher?

Which parts of the code in step 4 are part of the terminal output, and which aren’t?

(Sorry I’m asking so many questions-- I just don’t wanna fuck it up further; I wanna be sure to do it right)

I got to the “select cipher” step.

I assume I should select whichever cipher was used originally.

How do I find out which one was used?

I doubt I would have deviated from the default during setup, and i assume AES would have been said default, in which case I should pick that?

What should I do?

The line says “Select key type to use for newly created files”, but I’ll disregard the seemingly present confliction and presume that doesn’t change anything…?

(When I get around to it,) I’ll run the command again and select option 1, then enter the passphrase for [magentauser] (Edit: *[blueuser]).

Thanks again!

I just need to know what to do at this stage (the stage described in [34365607/18807477]):

There’s no error, I just don’t know what to do when presented with these two options. Is this expected behavior? As I said in [34365607/18807477], this dialogue (the choice between passphrase and tspi) doesn’t appear in the “HOWTO: Recover files from encrypted ecryptfs home directory” guide, so I just wanted to check that said dialogue was what was supposed to happen, and if so which option I should select.

There are more details and stuff on this in my previous comments, I’ll quote them below in chronological order so they’re all in one place.

Relevant comments in this chain/thread (chronological order):

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Comment 34365607/18807477:

I ran the command again, this time specifying an empty directory to mount to, but what do I do here?

I’d assume to select option 1, but this dialogue doesn’t seem to appear in the “HOWTO: Recover files from encrypted ecryptfs home directory” guide, so I just wanted to check.

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Comment 34365607/18809283:

I know, I created the folder “oldhome-mountpoint” in “/home/newuser/oldhome-backup”, then copied the path to that and used it as the specified mount point in the command, or at least I thought I did. I’ll double check it again

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Comment 34365607/18809448:

I double checked

It seems to exist, and when copying the path it also seems to match the one used in the command.

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Comment 34365607/18892748:

I still don’t know what to do at this point in the process, If you could get back to me at some point soon that’d be neat.

I looked for answers on the internet and haven’t found much of use, but I also asked a few LLMs and the responses all suggest that this choice is expected behavior for this process, though again, said choice does not appear in the guide, so idk.

As I said, both directories seem to exist.

(Again, what should I do?)

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Comment 34365607/19002981:

I can’t really pay, and I feel like using dms for this kind of stuff kinda just denies others access to the information provided/discussed. (If what you say could be useful to me, it could also be useful to someone else)

Could you just try to help me progress further toward sorting this out?

Again; The directory provided as the last argument in the command seems definitely to exist. Should I select an option when the two options are provided, and if so, is the first option preferable?

If you don’t quite know how I should proceed, or otherwise can’t provide further help, that’s also fine, but please let me know either way. (Also idk exactly what “We offer paid remote help if you want that” means, but if you don’t have the time/wherewithal/etc to provide further help without pay or whatever, the same applies)

Since it has taken two comments to get through to you the past few times, here’s a second comment.

Please just reply to the first one at some point… It is my reply to this. - i.e. my reply to the comment I am replying to with this comment. (34365607/19002981 - https://lemmy.world/post/34365607/19002981 < the first one)

I can’t really pay, and I feel like using dms for this kind of stuff kinda just denies others access to the information provided/discussed. (If what you say could be useful to me, it could also be useful to someone else)

Could you just try to help me progress further toward sorting this out?

Again; The directory provided as the last argument in the command seems definitely to exist. Should I select an option when the two options are provided, and if so, is the first option preferable?

If you don’t quite know how I should proceed, or otherwise can’t provide further help, that’s also fine, but please let me know either way. (Also idk exactly what “We offer paid remote help if you want that” means, but if you don’t have the time/wherewithal/etc to provide further help without pay or whatever, the same applies)

Could you at some point reply to this comment pls?: (34365607/18915085)

I still don’t know what to do at this point in the process, If you could get back to me at some point soon that’d be neat.

I looked for answers on the internet and haven’t found much of use, but I also asked a few LLMs and the responses all suggest that this choice is expected behavior for this process, though again, said choice does not appear in the guide, so idk.

As I said, both directories seem to exist.

(Again, what should I do?)

I was gonna run through @just_another_person’s stuff ([see:thread:https://lemmy.world/post/34365607/18768234]) til its end before trying these commands, but while they still haven’t responded to my last comment, and after seeing [this post on stackexchange] again, I decided to just try ecryptfs-mount-private and ecryptfs-recover-private (in the new user I created before (again, see 34365607/18768234)) to see what would happen.

Unfortunately, (though of course not unexpectedly,) the result was (pretty much) only the same as it was for @flofreelance. (though I don’t of course know much of the ins and outs of the output…)

[key]: (magenta: new user’s username.)

Thanks for commenting nonetheless, @Fizz

I know, I created the folder “oldhome-mountpoint” in “/home/newuser/oldhome-backup”, then copied the path to that and used it as the specified mount point in the command, or at least I thought I did. I’ll double check it again

I ran the command again, this time specifying an empty directory to mount to, but what do I do here?

I’d assume to select option 1, but this dialogue doesn’t seem to appear in the “HOWTO: Recover files from encrypted ecryptfs home directory” guide, so I just wanted to check.

Yeah, I see the “/media/” bit on the end now - idk why I didn’t clock that as something significant, I’ll try again with a specified mount point. Thanks for clarifying! (and also thanks @Wolf_Munroe for pointing it out earlier)

I’m kinda just running through @just_another_person’s suggestion ([see:thread:https://lemmy.world/post/34365607/18768234]) and if that doesn’t work I’ll probably see if I can do anything with the ecryptfs-recover-private commands. ([see:thread:https://lemmy.world/post/34365607/18770862])