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I had Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 installed with an encrypted /home.

I just installed Ubuntu 18.04 and everything goes well however when I try to login I get a black screen**. After a a minute or so it is back to the login screen.

I tried both the regular and the minimal installations.

Logging in with a tty works however It seems the encrypted /home is not accessible (ls shows a file related to Private; I do not recall the filename; I reinstalled Ubuntu Gnome 16.04).

What might be going on?

** I tried nomodeset; no difference

user10853
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  • What do you mean by "With an encrypted /home (with Ubuntu Gnome 16.04) I installed Ubuntu 18.04."? Did you install 18.04 or did you upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 via an upgrade procedure? And please explain how (for example, did you make a fresh installation of the root partition, but kept the home partition, which is encrypted? In this case there may be a problem, because the ecrypt program package(s) are no longer packaged by default (in 18.04 LTS). Maybe they were picked up, maybe not, because of the encrypted home). – sudodus Apr 28 '18 at 21:06
  • I've updated my question. I meant that the encrypted home was made with Ubuntu Gnome 16.04. I am using the same home for the fresh installation of Ubuntu 18.03 – user10853 Apr 29 '18 at 14:54
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    The ecrypt program package(s) are no longer packaged by default (in 18.04 LTS). Instead LVM with encryption is recommended. The 'encrypted home' option has disappeared from the installer. It may be possible to install the necessary tools for encrypted home, but it might be difficult to make it work. 1. Does a fresh installation work, when you are not using a separate home partition? 2. Have you got a backup of your old system? Otherwise can you use the 'ecrypt' tools and the password/passphrase, to decrypt your home partition manually. – sudodus Apr 29 '18 at 16:23
  • I am not an expert on recovering 'encrypted home'. If you need more help, I suggest that you ask a separate question "How to recover 'encrypted home'" with a detailed description of what you have and what you want. – sudodus Apr 29 '18 at 16:25
  • @sudodus I have reinstalled my base system (Ubuntu Gnome 16.04) and I am using it. Live image works but haven't tried installing with a new /home. I was hoping for a clean transition to 18.04 but it seems as per your explanation that I need to backup and have a new /home. – user10853 Apr 29 '18 at 21:43
  • I'm glad you have a working system now :-) Yes, I think that you need to backup your system (or at least all your personal files or better the whole /home directory tree. With a good backup you can afford some experiments. – sudodus Apr 29 '18 at 22:10
  • @sudodus Thank you. I read here about LVM. Is it possible to move to LVM on the current /home? If so would you recommend it? Either case I will definitely backup. – user10853 Apr 29 '18 at 22:45
  • It is possible, but I have only used LVM with encryption via the automatic alternatives in the installer. I don't know the details how to use it 'manually'. I think you can learn how to do it and make it work well, but there is a learning curve. – sudodus Apr 29 '18 at 23:55

1 Answers1

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I solved a very similar problem by running (as user):

chmod 777 ~/.ICEauthority 
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Hope it helps. To find this solution I used information found <here>.

Warner
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