ecryptfs team mailing list archive

[Dustin Kirkland <dustin.kirkland@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've seen this happen twice now, both times in the ext4 filesystem
beneath my encrypted home directory using ecryptfs.

Tyler Hicks and I spent about 4 or 5 hours trying to track down the bug
in ecryptfs.

In my dmesg, I was seeing the following (recording here in case other
ecryptfs users experience the same problem):

    Valid eCryptfs headers not found in file header region or xattr
region

The file was an ecryptfs file, with an encrypted filename.  However,
there is no such thing as 0-byte files in ecryptfs.  Even empty files
are padded and encrypted.  When ecryptfs encounters (tries to read or
write) an empty file, it cannot find any valid headers (as the dmesg
says), which means that it can't decode the fek with the fnek, and
<barf>.

I was able to track these files down in the underlying encrypted
directory, and clean them out with the following:

 $ umount.ecryptfs_private
 $ cd $HOME/.Private
 $ mount.ecryptfs_private
 $ find . -size 0c | xargs -i rm -f {}

I'm going to mark this bug as "affecting" ecryptfs-utils, but mark it
"invalid", such that search results for users with the same problem
might find themselves here.

Ted, thanks for the detailed explanations.

:-Dustin

** Also affects: ecryptfs-utils (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: ecryptfs-utils (Ubuntu Jaunty)
   Importance: Undecided => High
       Status: New => Invalid

-- 
Ext4 data loss
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/317781
You received this bug notification because you are a member of eCryptfs,
which is subscribed to ecryptfs-utils in ubuntu.

Status in “ecryptfs-utils” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
Status in “linux” source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
Status in ecryptfs-utils in Ubuntu Jaunty: Invalid
Status in linux in Ubuntu Jaunty: Confirmed

Bug description:
I recently installed Kubuntu Jaunty on a new drive, using Ext4 for all my data.

The first time i had this problem was a few days ago when after a power loss ktimetracker's config file was replaced by a 0 byte version . No idea if anything else was affected.. I just noticed ktimetracker right away.

Today, I was experimenting with some BIOS settings that made the system crash right after loading the desktop. After a clean reboot pretty much any file written to by any application (during the previous boot) was 0 bytes.
For example Plasma and some of the KDE core config files were reset. Also some of my MySQL databases were killed...

My EXT4 partitions all use the default settings with no performance tweaks. Barriers on, extents on, ordered data mode..

I used Ext3 for 2 years and I never had any problems after power losses or system crashes.

Jaunty has all the recent updates except for the kernel that i don't upgrade because of bug #315006

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: linux-image-2.6.28-4-generic 2.6.28-4.6
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=81942248-db70-46ef-97df-836006aad399 ro rootfstype=ext4 vga=791 all_generic_ide elevator=anticipatory
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-4.6-generic
SourcePackage: linux