Hey guys, I am on ubuntu 18.04 desktop and am having a really weird issue with rclone crypt.
I have a crypt remote set up on one computer (mounting google drive) and I am trying to access it form another computer. I created the Gdrive remote on the second computer and it is working as expected.
But when I create the crypt remote, I set the values as needed and type in the 2 passwords that are used in the config of the crypt remote I am trying to access. I complete the config and then try to access the files, to no avail. I then edited the crypt config to see if I made a typo only to find that both of the passwords stored in the crypt config are very different than the ones I put in.
I tried changing them back through the command line several times but my inputs never get saved and the passwords that are there keep changing every time I edit the config.
I even went to the config file directly and edited the passwords there and saved it but this didn't stick either. Please let me know what I can provide you to troubleshoot this.
The "passwords" that are in the config file are not the passwords you used to encrypt the directory. That is the result of you entering in a password (or more likely a passphrase) and the system using an encrypting algorithm to save the password.
You saw that was the case when you entered the password from the config file and it was encrypted to something else. You can verify that is what happened by creating a new encrypted remote and trying to do the same thing you are doing - and that would work.
Since it seems you do not have/remember the original password, what I would suggest (and someone can correct me if I am wrong) is to change the password of the encrypted remote, Change Password and that will solve your problem.
I have never done that, but from what I read, that will solve your issue.
Mylogon is correct. The password in the config file are obscured.
But don't panic. the solution is simply to paste the (already obscured) passwords directly into the config file. That will work fine. The reason it's not working to put the already obscured crypt-keys into rclone config is because then the result will be "double obscured", so it won't be correct when reversed.
I'm not sure if using the change password command will help, because I think that will also do obscuring just like config does... I have honestly never used the command because I prefer to work directly in the config file hehe...
I think you might have misunderstood it.
I'm pretty sure this does not change the encryption on the drive - it just changes the crypt key in the config (and obscures it).
If you lost your crypt key completely then this would not save you... that is game-over for your data. That's why it really advisable to have some sort of backup of it in a secure location. You don't want to lose your crypt key in some random HDD crash and be screwed...
@thestigma and @mylogon thank you very much for your responses. They make perfect sense and i get whats going on now. I followed your suggestions and got it working!