Re: ext4 encryption trap

[Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>]

On Mon 2016-08-29 12:40:24, Bernd Schubert wrote:
> On Monday, August 29, 2016 12:08:16 PM CEST Pavel Machek wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > You encrypt a directory -- sounds easy, right? Support is in 4.4
> > kernel, my machines run newer kernels than that. Encrypting root would
> > be hard, but encrypting parts of data partition should be easy.
> > 
> > Ok, lets follow howto... Need to do tune2fs. Right. Aha, still does
> > not work, looks like I'll need to reboot.
> > 
> > Hmm. Will not boot. Grub no longer recognizes my /data partition, and
> > that's where new kernels are. Old kernels are in /boot, but those are
> > now useless. Lets copy new kernel on machine using USB stick. Does not
> > boot. Fun.
> > 
> > tune2fs on root filesystem is useless, as it is too old. New one
> > is ... on the data partition. Right. Ok, lets bring newer version of
> > tune2fs in. "encryption" feature can not be cleared.
> > 
> > Argh! Come on, I did not even create single encrypted directory on the
> > partition. I want the damn bit to go off, so I can go back to working
> > configuration. "Old kernels can not read encrypted files" sounds ok,
> > but "old kernels can not mount filesystem at all" is not acceptable
> > here :-(.
> > 
> > Is there way to go back? Restoring 400GB from backups would not be fun
> 
> I have not tried it myself,  but this should work?
> 
> debugfs -w -R "feature -encrypt" /dev/device
> 
> 
> (assuming the feature flag is called "encrypt")

Yes, I figured out debugfs could be used to do this. (But thanks for
the command line). If all tunefs did was to set the bit, this is
safe. Is it?

[I guess I can do fsck -fn, debugfs, fsck -fn; if it passes I should
be safe, if it does not I can turn +encrypt back on, and would be no
worse than I'm now. Hmm?]

Thanks,
								Pavel
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