Can I edit ecryptfs encrypted file?

Question

I set up Linux Mint 16 with the automatic encryption option (ecryptfs) and all was fine until I added an environment variable to .profile and mistyped the home directory for the environment variable. On subsequent bootups I got a message that my session only lasted 10 seconds, so effectively I cannot normally access my drive and files.

I booted up with a second drive and using ecryptfs-recover-private I can see the wounded .profile file but despite changing permissions am unable to write to the .profile file to resume normality.

Can anyone tell me how to edit the encrypted file? Failing that, since .profile is ignored if .bash_profile exists, I could try to ad an encrypted .bash_profile to my home directory. I would really appreciate any guidance.

Answer 1

You really should read the man pages of tools you use. And man ecryptfs-recover-private is only about 2 screens too... you would have seen this:

By default, the mount will be read-only. To mount with read and write permission, add the --rw parameter.