Can't reach my system on the encrypted disk

[JanK]

Hello!

I can't reach my MX OS on the encrypted disk. Or even files on it through live-CD.

I don't know if it is connected, but previously i had a problem with proprietary Nvidia driver as described here ->>, so i had to switch to an open-source driver.

Some time after that i had begun to experience problems with different browsers from Chrome to Firefox. They freezed and force quit didn't help, sometimes whole the system got stuck and i had to press restart button.

I was going to reinstall the system in the nearest future, but today i can't even login.

After the browser freeze, system got completely freeze too. I had to manually restart the computer. And i cant go further the encrypted disk login screen.

After the GRUB options, when i choose MX, i see the blue encrypted disk login screen. Which is fine. But after i enter the passcode (it is correct, i checked) i see only the slow growing progress bar, i wait minutes and minutes and then it stuck on the 100%.

If i press arrows or insert i see the "recovery journal" message (see the attached picture).

I have tried to access the encrypted disk through LIVE-CD, but i got the following error:

Code: Select all

"An error occurred while accessing '82.0 GiB Encrypted Drive', the system responded: The requested operation has failed: Error mounting /dev/dm-0 at /media/demo/homeMX: can't read superblock on /dev/mapper/luks-aec966e2-775e-4b9d-8c0a-ac2d51a2a149 "

I hope i will somehow at least get access to the files on encrypted disk...

I have an MX KDE21 with systemD and... gnome.

Can't give you full system info, as i can't work in Linux now.

It is rather basic build with Intel i5 and Nvidia 1050. Dual-boot with Windows.

1)SSD - Windows partition

2) SSD - Linux partition (/home encrypted) + small NTFS disk

3) HDD for storage

[JanK]

Anyone have ideas?

I guess the problem is with the encrypted disk itself... Is there a chance to get access to the data on it?

[j2mcgreg]

@Jan K. wrote:

Can't give you full system info, as i can't work in Linux now.

Boot into a live session and run the QSI from there.

You have stated that you can't access your encrypted disk, but you haven't said why. Forgotten password? Hardware failure? Something else?

[Adrian]

"recovery journal" -- that usually show when there was un forced shutdown (or some other problem). Does it get stuck there?
You could also boot to the Live environment on a USB flashdrive, mount the drive from there and recover your stuff and run chkdsk on the partition to see if it finds any errors, you could even chroot and run commands inside your installed system running the Live environment. Depending what the problem is it might be better to save your stuff and reinstall (check disk for problems before doing that)

[JanK]

You have stated that you can't access your encrypted disk, but you haven't said why. Forgotten password? Hardware failure? Something else?

Hi, thank you for your reply. Because i don't know why. At first i thought that maybe the problem is with something else, maybe even with a video driver. But i think, as far as i can't access it via LIVE-CD, this is a problem with the disk itself/encryption. Probably i didn't make it clear: my whole home folder is encrypted, so i can't even login (see the pictures above).

Now i tried to login and saw the following:


When i tried to access the disk through the LIVE-CD i got an error again, as described above:




The problem is not with the password, i remember it, and i guess if it was the problem errors would be other. I don't think that it is a hardware failure, because other drives on this SSD work fine.

[JanK]

"recovery journal" -- that usually show when there was un forced shutdown (or some other problem). Does it get stuck there?

Yes, there was forced shutdown. Yeah, it stuck.

You could also boot to the Live environment on a USB flashdrive, mount the drive from there

I tried. It gives me an error:

Code: Select all

"An error occurred while accessing '82.0 GiB Encrypted Drive', the system responded: The requested operation has failed: Error mounting /dev/dm-0 at /media/demo/homeMX: can't read superblock on /dev/mapper/luks-aec966e2-775e-4b9d-8c0a-ac2d51a2a149 "

[Adrian]

You can try to recover the superblock... but not sure how likely is that:
https://www.linuxbabe.com/desktop-linux ... lock-error

[JanK]

You can try to recover the superblock... but not sure how likely is that:
https://www.linuxbabe.com/desktop-linux ... lock-error

Oh... Didn't know that hard reset can be so dangerous ( I will try, thank you.

So, the problem is NOT with encryption?

[Adrian]

It's probably a problem with the file system, but if you have a problem with the file system encryption doesn't makes thing easier...

[j2mcgreg]

@Jan K. wrote:

So, the problem is NOT with encryption?

It still could be. Your system has a few possible points of failure and we have try to narrow things down to the specific one. @Adrian's suggestion above should be the first step.