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This problem follows on from 14.04: No Auto login at User Account settings - I am administrator (see all comments)

I tried to remove encryption via this link How can I enable autologin for my user account when the option is not there?

but when I tried: 

$ mv -rf /home/user
mv: invalid option -- 'r'

after that I was getting cannot remove [etc...] Read Only file system.

I skipped over what couldn't be done and went straight to trying to rm /home/user/.ecryptfs. Finished, rebooted, and now the login screen is stuck on the password login screen

I went here and tried this Login screen loops unless you login as Guest

I inputted command sudo mv .Xauthority .XauthorityBak which resulted in

mv: cannot stat 'X.authority': No such file or directory

I tried 

$ mount -rw -o remount /home/[username]
mount: only root can do that

I tried the second answer here Ubuntu gets stuck in a login loop

$ ls -lah
total 8.OK
dr-x------ 2 [username username] 4.OK Dec 15 2014 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4. OK Dec 15 00:10 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 [username username] 56 Oct 24 15:51 Access-Your-PrivateData.desktop -> /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils/ecryptfs-mount-private.desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 1 [username username] 32 Oct 24 15:51 .Private -> /home/.ecryptfs/[username]/.Private
lrwxrwxrwx 1 [username username] 32 Oct 24 15:51 README.txt -> /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils/ecryptfs-mount-private.txt
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Warwick
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  • Can you post the output of ls -l /home/.ecryptfs/[username]/. On the whole, I think your attempt failed thoroughly. Did you decrypt your home directory before doing the rm, mv, etc.? – muru Dec 15 '14 at 22:18
  • Is this from a guest terminal, or from the boot shell through which I did the last part? – Warwick Dec 15 '14 at 22:25
  • in a guest terminal I am unable to change to root grid: Operation not permitted, and the output for that command afterwards is ls: cannot access /home/.ecryptfs/[username]/: No such file or directory – Warwick Dec 15 '14 at 22:36
  • Try this command: su - warwick, where warwick is your username. This will start a shell under your user id. Then try the ls command. – muru Dec 15 '14 at 22:38
  • setgid: Operation not permitted – Warwick Dec 15 '14 at 22:42
  • Press Ctrl-Alt-F1, login using your username/password, then try the command. To make posting the output easier, do: sudo ls -l /home/.ecryptfs/[username]/ > /tmp/file-list. Press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get to the GUI, and from the guest account, get the output of cat /tmp/file-list. – muru Dec 15 '14 at 22:50
  • no such file or directory (still in shell) – Warwick Dec 15 '14 at 22:59
  • That does not sound good. And what about sudo find /home/.ecryptfs? – muru Dec 15 '14 at 23:01
  • /home/.ecryptfs – Warwick Dec 15 '14 at 23:04
  • Ok, unless you followed the steps in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1134121 (linked in the original post, I'm afraid you have lost all the data in your home folder. We can create a new home folder, but that's about it. – muru Dec 15 '14 at 23:09
  • Ok. I know when I go into Windows, I can access music because that was on a different partition, but non of the documents I had in the home drive are accessible through Windows, so yeah, I accept that I may have lost it all. I have a backup from 2-3 weeks ago, so lost content not too much of a problem. – Warwick Dec 15 '14 at 23:17

1 Answers1

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Since you could not get unencrypted content and the read-only filesystem problem messed up the steps, login to a TTY (CtrlAltF1) using your username and password, and do:

sudo mkdir /home/bak
sudo mv $HOME /home/bak
sudo mv /home/.ecryptfs /home/bak
sudo cp -R /etc/skel $HOME
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME

In order, these commands do:

  • Make a backup directory
  • Move your current home directory to the back up, as well as the .ecryptfs folder
  • Make a new home folder using the basic profile in /etc/skel
  • Assign you as the owner of the new home folder.

Now, try logging into the GUI (CtrlAltF7) using your username.

muru
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