<div dir="ltr">This story hurts. I think you're right about asking on this list, though. Lots of experienced people here. I'm not familiar with Deja Dup, but I think many cryptographic key paradigms require two keys. A personal or private key, and a public key (a remote key). When you encrypt for someone else, you use their remote (public) key to encrypt it, and they decrypt it with their private key. And vice versa--a remote party encrypts a message/data for you with your public key, which you decrypt with your private key. (I'm thinking of GPG/PGP here....)<div><br></div><div>So I'm guessing the private key was in the home directory somewhere. But, wait, if Deja Dup didn't have access to the private key before the decryption process, how would it decrypt the data? Wouldn't that require that the private key was accessible before the decryption, so therefore the private key was stored somewhere else on the hard drive? Err, which is gone now? I would re-read the Deja Dup manual and hopefully find out where that private key gets stored, or maybe even backed up remotely at <a href="http://dejadup.com">dejadup.com</a> or something? Or does Deja Dup not use two keys but only one? Might be useful to find out. Maybe search "data recovery" at <a href="http://dejadup.com">dejadup.com</a> or something?</div><div><br></div><div>All that said, I could see encrypting a partition on a device that contains sensitive data as well as is easily stolen, such as a laptop or something. But even so, encryption is so powerful that I probably would only use it on smaller segments of data that wouldn't affect the system as a whole. </div><div><br></div><div>All the best to you, Jim. I hate it when "tech learning" becomes this painful!</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 10:49 PM Jim Ransone via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">I tried the password and it acted busy for a little while and then asked for the password again. Not sure what that means. I guess if I can figure out the commands and try it in the terminal, maybe it would give me an error message, which would be less mysterious.</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 10:26 PM Jim Kinney <<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com" target="_blank">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>If you are super lucky, the old password might actually work. <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On August 21, 2020 9:05:40 PM EDT, Jim Ransone via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="auto">Bummer. As I said, I am not very tech savvy. I really don't even understand encryption. This Deja Dup backup software was widely recommended and encrypting all the files was the default. I didn't know enough to even question this. Now I realize how stupid that was. They put warnings on plastic bags so people don't suffocate themselves. You'd think they might put a warning on software that encrypts all your data.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 8:37 PM SpaXpert, Inc. <<a href="mailto:spaxpert@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">spaxpert@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Unfortunately, if you lost your encryption key, then you're likely in the burnt toast department. If you could find anyone to fix this situation you'd probably owe them a million bucks. I've been working with Linux for over 25 years, and I'm definitely not the smartest ever, but it saves me from the bots. That said, I would never encrypt my data with a sole encryption key that could be... never mind. <br></div><div><br></div><div>Sad advice... I have a separate usb hard drive that I drag and drop the critical folders that I use for work occasionally. That works for me, and everything is unencrypted. 10 years ago I lost tons of family videos and photos that I didn't backup due to a crappy hd controller on a crap motherboard. Never again.</div><div><br></div><div>I feel your pain.</div><div>Doug.<br> </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 8:19 PM Jim Ransone via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">Hey all,<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I found this group when searching for a local computer repair place that works on Linux stuff. I am not a programmer or particularly tech savvy. I'm hoping I can get some advice here, be it a recommendation on somewhere I can go to pay someone to fix this, or tips on how to fix it myself.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I did something that in retrospect seems completely boneheaded. I am running Ubuntu Studio 20.04 on my laptop and was backing up my data to an external hard drive using Deja Dup (which uses Duplicity.) I was trying to fix some audio issues and somehow screwed things up pretty badly, so I reinstalled Ubuntu Studio 20.04 hoping to take everything back to before the audio problems. The reinstall erased everything. When I went to restore my home folder from the backup, it's not working because of the encryption. From an old forum thread I found about a similar situation, I was clued in to the sad news that I probably erased the encryption key during the reinstall. Doh! Suggestions included using testdisk to recover the data on the laptop and manually restoring the encrypted files on the backup drive. The latter seems very complicated and mysterious.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I might be in over my head trying to do this myself. Anyone know of anyone in the Atlanta area you would trust with a recovery job like this?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendations!</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jim</div></div>
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