Plasma vault does not open correctly, opening with cryfs cli returns [Log] [error] Crashed: Deserialization failed - missing nullbyte for string termination

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1

After a reboot with the vault open, I tried to open the vault from the plasma vault tray icon, it instead opens to the vault, but with no data in it and when I check the tray icon, it says that the vault is not open.
Trying to open the vault with

cryfs /path/to/the/encrypted/data /path/to/vault/mount/point

returns

----------------------------------------------------
Filesystem configuration:
----------------------------------------------------
- Filesystem format version: 0.10
- Created with: CryFS 0.11.0
- Last opened with: CryFS 0.11.3
- Cipher: xchacha20-poly1305
- Blocksize: 16384 bytes
- Filesystem Id: 953E35A639E869897A3E43FEBD29EBF1
----------------------------------------------------
[2022-12-21 11:24:47.285] [Log] [error] Crashed: Deserialization failed - missing nullbyte for string termination

I know that the data still exists somewhere on my drive, because I can see the .enc file and its the same size, but I don’t know how to access it. my other vault made before this happened still works normally.

Thank you for your time, it’s much appreciated

2

It would look like the encrypted data is corrupted by bad blocks of the disk or filesystem

3

Seems similar to this CryFS crashes when mounting · Issue #268 · cryfs/cryfs · GitHub
and this KDE Plasma Vaults issue / Newbie Corner / Arch Linux Forums

Default vaults location is ~/.local/share/plasma-vault/
You might need those and try to recover your files using this tool SiriKali works on Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows Operating Systems | SiriKali then maybe just recreate another vault.

4

How can I use SiriKali to recover the data?

5

You build it from AUR
pamac build sirikali

Once is done, you open the UI and then open the encrypted volume/folder from your vaults and enter the password for it and you then should be able to access the files.

6

It throws the same error as before

in that github issue thread they talked about making a recovery tool for bad blocks, but it doesn’t sound like they are making much progress on it
they also mentioned a tool to recognize issues, and i am trying that out now

7

  1. Do backup of your encrypted data first.

  2. Delete or move the broken cryfs:

 $ mv ~/.local/share/cryfs ~/Desktop/cryfs_backup
2 Likes
8

Thanks you very much, this worked, im going to go make some backups now

9

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