Mounting an encrypted partion Error

Posted by indiajoe on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by indiajoe
Published on 2012-10-31T21:05:30Z Indexed on 2012/11/01 5:16 UTC
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encryption

Using the disk utilities in ubuntu 11.04, i had encrypted a partition with a passphrase. Each time i used to click on the partition to mount, it used to ask me the passphrase and get mounted. All was fine, until i installed the 12.04. After the installation, this encrypted partition, disappeared from the menu.

fdisk -l /dev/sda

Shows the encrypted partition in the list

/dev/sda7       298953648   488392064    94719208+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

I tried the following commands to mount it. But they all gave following errors

$ sudo cryptsetup luksDump /dev/sda7

Device /dev/sda7 is not a valid LUKS device.


$ ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase /dev/sda7
Passphrase:     # i entered the correct passphrase here...

Error: Unwrapping passphrase failed [-5]
Info: Check the system log for more information from libecryptfs


$ grep ecryptfs /var/log/syslog

Oct 31 22:43:51 benny ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase: Error attempting to open [/dev/sda7] for reading
Nov  1 01:28:02 benny ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase: Error attempting to open [/dev/sda7] for reading
Nov  1 01:29:06 benny ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase: Error attempting to open [/dev/sda7] for reading

I don't understand why I am getting the "Device /dev/sda7 is not a valid LUKS device." Could it be due to some corruption in partition table? Is there any way to recover this encrypted partition? Thanks indiajoe

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