Comment 2 for bug 1004106

I think that this is an issue with symbolic links. I noticed the same problem as Karl-Philipp (geck creator), when I was trying to move home-directory data from an old installation to a new installation. I booted up into the new installation, then I mounted the partition of the old installation, then I tried to use ecrypt-recover-private to mount my old home directory from the old installation. I was surprised to find that it mounted my new home directory from the new installation.

Closer examination revealed that the file /media/oldpartition/home/tom/.Private was a symlink which pointed to /home/.ecryptfs/tom/.Private. Well, when I'm booted into the new installation, that link points to my NEW home directory, not my old one.

I was able to mount my old home directory after all, by pointing ecrypt-recover-private to /media/oldpartition/home/.ecryptfs/tom/Private.

This was extremely confusing, though, and I would suspect this would be borderline impossible for a new Linux user to figure out.

I'd suggest an improvement to this utility: if it is asked to recover something that is a symlink that points to a different partition, then check to see if that symlink can be followed if it is "reinterpreted" as if the root represented the root of that partition. So, for example, in my case "/home/.ecryptfs/tom/.Private" would be reinterpreted as "/media/oldpartition/home/.ecryptfs/tom/.Private". If so, then ask the user if that's what they want, or if they really want to follow the link as written.