Unable to open LUKS/Tails Encrypted Volumes on Qubes

User Support
1

Hi Everyone,

Qubes n00b here. For some reason I am unable to open any LUKS encrypted volumes on qubes. Have tried Disposable VMs, Vault etc with no avail.

The encrypted volume is detected, I input the password however when I try to open the volume it says Permission denied. I have tried using the command line to open using the following with the same issue persisting:

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/xvdi1 media

Navigate to /run/media/user/ and then again faced with Permission denied.

Have also tried sudo mount /dev/vg00/media mnt/media and the navigate to user mnt/media which I still face the same error message of “Permission denied”

Have tried absolutely everything, hopefully it’s something simple :sweat_smile:

Thanks

2

Maybe it’s only accessible by root.
Check the directory permissions or try to access the directory as root.

3

I tried changing the permissions of the folder by using chmod commands with highest elevated permissions howevever it is still saying permission denied. Is there anything else I can try?

4

Try to access the directory as root e.g.:

sudo ls -l /run/media/user/
5

what is the filesystem in that luks? Depending the mount option, you may need to force the ownership of that filesystem if it does not contain ownership information. This is required for most FUSE mount commands for instance.

6

Hey apparatus.

I input your command sudo ls -l /run/media/user/

and it enlists all the folders in terminal, how do I access these folders now? I navigated to /run/media/user/TailsData and when I try open last folder (TailsData) I get the following error:

Failed to open directory “TailsData”
Error opening directory ‘/run/media/user/TailsData’: Permission denied.

Thanks for your help so far, think we are getting close :rofl:

7

Hi Solene,

Thanks for your reply. How do I get the filesystem information you require?

Thanks

8

You can only access it as root user.
Add sudo before commands you want to run that will access this directory.
Or you can login as root user using sudo su command and then access the directory as root in the terminal.

You can also change the ownership of this directory to user user, then you’ll be able to access this directory using file manager e.g.:

sudo chown -R user:user /run/media/user/

But I don’t know if you want to change the permissions of the files or could it break something for you.

9

Yeah I get that I can only access it as a root user but didn’t realize the complexity of having to use this much of the terminal to access my encrypted volume considers I have already unlocked the volume with my password.
On other linux systems when I am faced with this same permission error I simply open a command and type "sudo open /run/media/user/TailsData and it will open in file manager.

I tried sudo su then a bash line came up, what would be the next step now?

Is there an easier way to open up LUKS encrypted volumes without having to change the permissions of a folder?

Thanks for all your help so far

10

Yay it worked. This done the trick, thank you so much apparatus :innocent: :innocent: :smile: :smile:

If I want to now revert back the permissions what command do I input? Or can I simply unmount the volume and that should be fine?

11

The sudo open /run/media/user/TailsData command should work as well. Did you not try it?

I don’t know, but this is not a question specific to Qubes OS so you’d find the answer faster in some general Linux forum.

It depends on the filesystem. In some general Linux filesystem g.e. ext3/ext4/etc, the change in permissions is permanent.
You can change the ownership back in the same way e.g. if all files were owned by root user then you could change it back with:

sudo chown -R root:root /run/media/user/

But different files could have different ownership so this could break things if you changed their ownership is some cases.

12

Thanks for everything, worked well :slightly_smiling_face: