ecryptfs-migrate-home(8)

📦 version 111, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, debian bookworm, debian trixie, fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ ecryptfs-migrate-home(8) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the eCryptfs corner of the man pages 💖 this one is about ecryptfs-migrate-home and it is lowkey a big deal, so grab a snack and read the whole thing, fr fr 🍓

🌸 NAME 🌸

ecryptfs-migrate-home — migrate a user's home directory to an encrypted home setup 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ecryptfs-migrate-home [-u|--user USER]

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -u, --user USER — migrate USER's home directory to an encrypted home directory. that's literally the whole flag list, she's a simple queen 👑

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

WARNING: Make a complete backup copy of the non-encrypted data to another system or external media. This script is dangerous and in case of an error, could result in data lost, or USER locked out of the system!

okay so real talk for a second: back up your unencrypted stuff somewhere else entirely — another system, external media, wherever. this script is dangerous, no cap, and if something goes sideways you could lose data or get USER completely locked out of the system 😭 that is not a vibe.

This program must be executed by root. like, you need the big permissions energy 👑

This program will attempt to migrate a user's home directory to an encrypted home directory. that's the mission, that's the main character arc 🌈

This program requires free disk space 2.5x the current size of the home directory to be migrated. once it's successful, you can recover most of this space by deleting the cleartext directory. so yeah, she eats disk space, but she gives most of it back 🫶

The USER must be logged out of all sessions in order to perform the migration, and have no open files according to lsof(1). like, fully logged out. no sneaky terminals hiding in the background, iykyk 👀

Once the migration has completed, the USER must login immediately, BEFORE THE NEXT REBOOT in order to complete the migration. BEFORE THE NEXT REBOOT bestie. do not reboot. do not pass go. log in immediately ⭐

After logging in, if USER can read and write files in their home directory successfully, then the migration has completed successfully and can remove the cleartext backup in /home/. it's giving success story 💖

After a successful migration, the USER really must run ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase(1) or zescrow(1) and record their randomly generated mount passphrase. really must. write that passphrase down somewhere safe, it's your key to everything 🔑

If swap is not already encrypted, it is highly recommended that your administrator setup encrypted swap using ecryptfs-setup-swap(1). highly recommended. tell your admin 🧚

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

http://ecryptfs.org/

👑 AUTHOR 👑

This manpage was written by Dustin Kirkland</...wait, keep the literal text:

This manpage was written by Dustin Kirkland <kirkland@ubuntu.com> for Ubuntu systems (but may be used by others). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian and Ubuntu systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.

and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was ecryptfs-utils, dated 2012-01-24, from the ecryptfs-migrate-home(8) manual. stay encrypted, stay backed up, and log in before you reboot, fr fr ✨🎀🦋

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