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Cyphertite troubleshooting

David Hill edited this page Jul 17, 2013 · 1 revision

We will update this section as more information becomes available.

Failure to decrypt files

This is a scary error, but has very few causes and thus easy to fix.

If you receive this message, chances are you have a problem with your ct_crypto file. Consider the scenario below:

  1. You run Cyphertite on Machine 1 and create a new archive.
  2. You copy your metadata file from Machine 1 to Machine 2
  3. You run Cyphertite on Machine 2 and create new archive with no crypto secrets file present (new crypto secrets file is generated)
  4. You try to extract the archive from Machine 1 by running Cyphertite on Machine 2 with the wrong ct_crypto file
  5. Failure to decrypt files ERROR is displayed
To fix this, you must copy the ct_crypto file from Machine 1 to Machine 2 and then re-run Cyphertite. Now that the proper secrets file is present, the files will be decrypted properly.

Keep in mind, similar behavior might be seen when using only one machine. If you experience a crash, some other catastrophic event, replace a hard disk, or wipe the system, you must replace your ct_crypto file for Cyphertite to function properly. We highly recommend saving cyphertite.conf and ct_crypto in a safe offline location for situations such as this.

Forgotten Password

If you have forgotten your Cyphertite account password, you can reset it here.

Keep in mind, this will reset your account password, not your crypto passphrase. Your account password is used to log into cyphertite.com and authenticate you when making backups. The account password is not used to encrypt your data. If you lose or forget your crypto passphrase, we cannot reset it for you. Cyphertite is a zero knowledge backup service. We do not store your crypto passphrase on our systems.

Known Limitations

Certain configurations are known to not work at the current time:

Multiple concurrent cyphertite processes on a single machine sharing a local cache database does not work due to sqlite3 database locking.