[BisManLUG] removing encrypted folders from usb drive

[David McCarty]

When my netbook crashed during the update I lost the folder with the password for the cryptkeeper which
I had used to encrypt some folders on a usb drive. I don't need the folders but I can not remove the partition on the drive (tried gparted).
Any idea how to either crack the password. (One source a googled told me to find this file %gconf.xml which I did and it contains the following:
<gconf>
−
<entry name="stashes" mtime="1269876304" type="string">
−
<stringvalue>
/media/B81D-E728/.backup_encfs
/media/B81D-E728/backup
</stringvalue>
</entry>
−
<entry name="filemanager" mtime="1269876304" type="string">
<stringvalue>nautilus</stringvalue>
</entry>
<entry name="idletimeout" mtime="1269876304" type="int" value="0"/>
<entry name="keep_mountpoints" mtime="1269876304" type="bool" value="false"/>
</gconf>

I'm not sure how to decipher this to come up with the password.

Interesting problem. I had to lose a 16gb fashdrive so any help will be appreciated.

Dave

[Dan Falconer]

Dave,

Can't you just fdisk the drive and delete all the partitions?  I've not encountered a situation where there was a partition that couldn't be wiped out...

--
Best Regards,


Dan Falconer
http://www.CrazedSanity.com || http://www.Buzzkill.org

[Brent]

Agreed or redo the mkfs of the file system, Linux doesn't care about
the content of the file system.
Start by umount-ing the file system, may be the auto-mount is the root
of your problems.

[David McCarty]

I must be missing something on the command line when I type:

dave@dave-AMD64desktop:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb1

I get the following:

Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xbb0b29c2.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to
         switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
         sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help):


Not sure what is going on or what the next command should be

---

From: Brent <bren...@gmail.com>
To: BisManLUG <bism...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 2:36:33 PM
Subject: [BisManLUG] Re: removing encrypted folders from usb drive

[Brent]

fdisk /dev/sdb, rather than
fdisk /dev/sdb1

sdb1 is first partition (file system), sdb is the whole device

I'm assuming you only have one hard drive in the system (sda). Be
certain sdb is your USB drive as you wouldn't want to erase some other
important storage device.

[David McCarty]

That fixed it. I just wrote the changes to the the usb and then restarted it and it is all available for use again. When I tried before to delete the partition and recreate a new one with gparted it keep returning error messages.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Dave

---

From: David McCarty <davesp...@yahoo.com>
To: bism...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 4:22:15 PM
Subject: Re: [BisManLUG] Re: removing encrypted folders from usb drive