Decryption of ZFS Pool not working anymore

[winnielinnie]

One last possibility that I can think of. Did you ever "receive" a replication to this pool?

Even if you think you didn't or don't remember, doesn't hurt to check.

Try both commands:

Code:

zpool history storage-pool | grep recv
zpool history storage-pool | grep receive

If nothing was "received" to this pool, then my last guesses are:

1. Issue with keyboard and/or special characters in the passphrase, in which your input is not being properly read
2. You're mistyping your passphrase, even if by a single character

Option 1 could be ruled out with another computer or keyboard, or just outright dismissed if you can clearly type in your passphrase into a text editor and it appears 100% correct. (Not to mention, you may not even be using any special characters.)

Option 2 has happened to me before. When I first created a passphrase (and even entered it twice), it was off by one character. I had been able to unlock it successfully because the way I type on a keyboard results in certain consistent "twitches" and "misses". This "twitch" became less prominent over time, and then when I revisited the encrypted container, I couldn't unlock it! (I opened up a text editor and quickly typed what I thought my passphase was over and over and over and over, allowing myself to be sloppy and make mistakes. It was from this "sloppy list" that I found the correct passphrase.)

 

[Sapp]

One last possibility that I can think of. Did you ever "receive" a replication to this pool?

Even if you think you didn't or don't remember, doesn't hurt to check.

Try both commands:

Code:

zpool history storage-pool | grep recv
zpool history storage-pool | grep receive

Unfortunately, nothing.

If nothing was "received" to this pool, then my last guesses are:

1. Issue with keyboard and/or special characters in the passphrase, in which your input is not being properly read
2. You're mistyping your passphrase, even if by a single character

Option 1 could be ruled out with another computer or keyboard, or just outright dismissed if you can clearly type in your passphrase into a text editor and it appears 100% correct. (Not to mention, you may not even be using any special characters.)

Option 2 has happened to me before. When I first created a passphrase (and even entered it twice), it was off by one character. I had been able to unlock it successfully because the way I type on a keyboard results in certain consistent "twitches" and "misses". This "twitch" became less prominent over time, and then when I revisited the encrypted container, I couldn't unlock it! (I opened up a text editor and quickly typed what I thought my passphase was over and over and over and over, allowing myself to be sloppy and make mistakes. It was from this "sloppy list" that I found the correct passphrase.)

Yeah, in the past that happened to me also multiple times - was a nightmare to recover from that issue. But I learned from that mistake and now just copy&pasted it from my password manager (that is fortunately not stored on the NAS) - so typo is rather unlikely, but indeed there are some special characters - could that cause issues with ZFS?

 

[winnielinnie]

Can you include these special characters in here?

I can try to create and unlock a "test" dataset with a passphrase that includes such characters.

Make sure to enclose the characters in "code" tags in your reply.

So for example...

"It contains these characters"

Code:

²
╬
§
|

 

[Davvo]

If you save your config, aren't you able to save the passwords as well in a separate file? Or is this kind not included?

 

[winnielinnie]

Not passphrases. Only keyfiles.