We have this policy to change password every ninety days. During Ubuntu Lucid install, I opted in to enable home directory encryption.
Yesterday before I left work, I changed my user password. When I got home, I was presented with various nice errors while logging into my Gnome desktop. What apparently happened is “passwd” do not update your encrypted /home/$USER for you. This is designed by purpose – prevent root from accessing your data by changing out your user password.
Instead, you have to run one additional command. Well, since I was locked out of my own home dir I had to unlock it first. Log in as your normal user (yes, you will able to log in), and run…
ecryptfs-mount-private
This will unlock and mount your /home/$USER.
At this point, we can access /home/$USER. So just cd back into it and run…
ecryptfs-rewrap-passphrase ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase
It’ll prompt you for your old password, and you can enter a new one afterwards.
You will need to change the password for your keyring as well.
- From your menu bar – [Applications] => [Accessories] => [Passwords and Encryption Keys]
- Under Passwords tab – right click “Passwords: login” and “Change Password”