[ale] Help with data recovery

[Bob]

Hi Jim,

I'm not seeing why you are thinking that the password must be on the 
backup drive somewhere.   There could be a standard phrase in a 
particular location on the backup drive like "The quick brown fox jumped 
over the lazy dog" except that the phrase is encrypted.  You enter the 
key=password, and Deja Dup uses that password to decrypt the encrypted 
version of the standard phrase.  If the decrypted phrase does turn out 
to be "The quick brown fox ...," then the password you entered is 
assumed to be correct.  (This is pure speculation---I do not know how 
Deja Dup actually works.)

I'm still leaning towards the most likely explanation is that you are 
not correctly remembering your password.  If there were a failure to 
store the password, that seems like it might be equivalent to not 
checking the box asking it to remember the password.  However, you're 
entering the password, which seems like it has nothing to do with 
whether Deja Dup saved the password in the gnome keyring.

Here's an experiment, and I take no responsibility if it goes horribly 
wrong.  :-)  Since you've installed Deja Dup on the older, spare laptop. 
  Plug in the external backup drive to the older, spare laptop and 
attempt to restore a few files.  Do not backup anything to the external 
hard drive.  However, see if you can restore a few files from the 
external hard drive with what you think is the password.

If you were to try the above, I think I'd re-install the os and Deja Dup 
on the laptop.  Don't ask Deja Dup to remember any password.  Don't save 
anything to the backup drive.  Just plug in the external backup drive 
and see if you can restore a file or two with what you think is the 
password from the external hard drive to your old laptop.

Before trying the above, you might want to wait and see if some of the 
other say, "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU DO WHAT HE SUGGESTED."  :-)

--Bob

On 2020-08-24 4:19 p.m., Jim Ransone wrote:
> Much thanks to everyone for the suggestions and advice so far! Here is an
> update:
> 
> I have attempted to duplicate the entire scenario on an older spare laptop.
> 
> - I installed the same OS - Ubuntu Studio 20.04.
> - I created a folder and filled it with a handful of files.
> - I used Deja Dup to back up the folder onto a usb flash drive. (Didn't
> want to risk doing something weird to my actual backup drive.) Was asked to
> create a password.
> - Reinstalled Ubuntu Studio 20.04 with the same settings as before (erasing
> everything.)
> - Reinstalled Deja Dup.
> - Used Deja Dup with the password to successfully restore the backup.
> 
> This indicates to me that you are right, Bob. The password was the
> password. There is no other key that's being created and stored somewhere.
> It also would seem to indicate that the password is somewhere on the backup
> drive, but I don't have any idea where on the drive that would be.
> 
> So either I am misremembering the original password, as you suggested, Bob,
> or there is some other issue. I have seen comments online about a bug that
> cause it to sometimes fail to store the key.
> 
> Jim
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