Writing in certain fields is impossible. No matter what I do or what keyes I press nothing appears. Even here I had to use copy/paste from OpenOffice

What browser are you asking about, and what extensions (including toolbars) have you installed in it?

Have you added any non-Ubuntu repositories, or installed any non-standard software packages manually?

If you create a new user account in a different name, using System > Administration > Users and Groups, then log out, and log in as the new user - do you still face the same problems?

At the time when you face this problem, can you please run 'ps ax' in a terminal window, copy the results, and paste them to this thread?

Thanks,
Ed.

The browser is Opera 10.10 with no extensions added by me (I installed it less than 24 hours ago). Restarting it seems to solve the problem. Might be an unrelated browser bug.

If I remember correctly I created a new Mobile Broadband connection just before the bug first appeared. I'm using a Vodafone K3765 USB modem (made by HUAWEI). I did not install Vodafone Mobile Connect, just configured it from Network Connections. A day or two later, when I tried to decrypt a file I noticed I could not write the passphrase.

Another event happened immediatly after I configured my Internet connection. A friend tried to make some space on my hard drive and removed several things using Synaptic Package Manager. He is not a programmer so did not know exactly what he was doing. After that I updated Ubuntu in the hope that it would recover whatever he had removed (I thought that that was the source of the problem).

Loging out and in did not do anything.

I tried to decrypt a file and then opened the terminal but I could not write anything anywhere so running 'ps ax' is out of the question. Strangely enough the only situation in which I cannot write in a field is when I try to decrypt a file. When I mount a drive I also have to type a password and that is unaffected.

I also checked at System>Preferences> Encryption and Keyrings to see if my default Key had somehow been deleted but it is still there.

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 6:35 PM, Cezar
<email address hidden> wrote:
> The browser is Opera 10.10 with no extensions added by me (I installed
> it less than 24 hours ago). Restarting it seems to solve the problem.
> Might be an unrelated browser bug.

A common simple debug trick is to close all instances of the browser,
and launch it from a terminal window (hoping you can type in it!). Any
output in the terminal after launching the browser might give a clue
about this behavior. Then you can copy any error/warning-type output
and Google for it, beginning with the Opera forums... you may find
that it's a reported bug.

> If I remember correctly I created a new Mobile Broadband connection just
> before the bug first appeared. I'm using a Vodafone K3765 USB modem [...]
>
> Another event happened immediatly after I configured my Internet
> connection. A friend tried to make some space on my hard drive and
> removed several things using Synaptic Package Manager. He is not a
> programmer so did not know exactly what he was doing. After that I
> updated Ubuntu in the hope that it would recover whatever he had removed
> (I thought that that was the source of the problem).

Rather than creating the mobile broadband connection, I would say that
this haphazard removal of software packages may be responsible for the
issues. W.r.t. this:
a) No, doing an update will not auto-reinstall uninstalled software
(that would be quite crazy, would it not :-) "ghost" packages that
kept coming back after being uninstalled.)

b) If he did all the package removals (and perhaps installation of new
ones) from Synaptic, then you should find a log of packages
removed/added -- on Synaptic's File menu, click History, and look in
the History window for the date on which your friend uninstalled the
packages. On a normal system, you could have copied the list of
uninstalled packages out into a Text Editor window perhaps, and gone
through them, marking each for reinstallation in Synaptic. But I
suggest you shouldn't do that on this system (see below).

> Loging out and in did not do anything.
>
> I tried to decrypt a file and then opened the terminal but I could not
> write anything anywhere so running 'ps ax' is out of the question.
> Strangely enough the only situation in which I cannot write in a field
> is when I try to decrypt a file. When I mount a drive I also have to
> type a password and that is unaffected.

This is really weird. My first suspicion was malware - a keylogger
installed on your system, which is causing these problems. That's why
I wanted a 'ps ax', to see if any unfamiliar names were shown by
Google to be malware. (Yes, they are possible in Linux as well, though
a lot harder to install remotely). A bad extension in your browser
could cause problems like you mention, but in the browser only -
should certainly not affect a terminal window!

It _could_ be malfunctioning hardware, too - for example, on an old
desktop system I have, the PS/2 keyboard works OK most of the time,
but on some boots (Ubuntu 9.10 Studio) there is absolutely no input
from the keyboard - it is "dead" - and I have to reboot. But once the
keyboard works at the GDM login screen, it works reliably for the
whole session. Nothing like what you mention.

Given that your software packages are quite messed up, and that your
installation is exhibiting some pretty worrying symptoms, I would
suggest that you back up any documents, photos and other data that are
on this partition, and re-install Ubuntu, *formatting the partition*.
And don't let the friend at your administrative tools again -- or even
your account - if the friend wants to borrow your computer for a
mail-check or surfing the Net, simply launch a Guest session for the
friend. That will save you such problems in future :-)

All the best,
Ed.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite done yet.

Despite your recommendation to reinstall Ubuntu, I decided to try and reinstall the packages that were removed. There is no unusual behavior from my computer so far, but the bug hasn't been fixed either. The problem with formatting and reinstalling is that I would loose my encryption key and my files would be forever unusable. I was already thinking of upgrading to 10.04 but I wanted to save those files first.

So, given that information:

1. Is there anyway I could use the Terminal to bypass the malfunctioning passphrase window and decrypt my files? The Terminal works just fine, except for yesterday when I tried to use it while the passphrase window was open.
I admit that I have little understanding of how to give commands through the Terminal, but I could probably manage if someone gave me good and detailed instructions.

OR

2. Is there anyway to back-up my encryption key and then use after I reinstall Ubuntu?

Thank you for all the help so far :-)

Cezar, I don't use encryption much, so am quite a n00b there.

Regarding backing up and restoring your keys: see
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GnuPrivacyGuardHowto#Backing up and restoring your key pair

The Passwords and Encryption Keys util also has an export option, but I'm not sure what that does in the background. Better to use the command-line. If your GNOME-Terminal is still locked-up, try Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to a console, see if that works. Alternately, copying and pasting the commands from the webpage into a terminal might work...?

To be sure you have the keys properly backed up, you could test the exported keys in another Ubuntu installation. You could store the exported files on a USB thumb drive. Then do a minimum installation of Ubuntu on another partition, or in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Copy a couple of encrypted files across into the new installation, import your backed-up keys from the USB thumb drive. Try to decrypt the files. If that works, then you know you've exported the correct files to your USB thumb drive, and are not tied down to your flawed installation.
Hope that goes well for you, 'cos I've just about reached the limits of my knowledge regarding encryption and keys on Ubuntu... :-)

Cezar, have you tried backing up your keys as per the guide I linked to in my last post? Would you please update us on what happened?

Thanks,
Ed.

I have not had any time yet in order to do anything. My schedule is very busy right now. I will report what happened once it clears up. Sorry for the delay :-(.

I have not had any time yet in order to do anything. My schedule is very busy right now. I will report what happened once it clears up. Sorry for the delay :-(.

I have not had any time yet in order to do anything. My schedule is very busy right now. I will report what happened once it clears up. Sorry for the delay :-(.

and sorry for the multiple post, my browser was acting up again :-(