Today, after decrypting my encrypted drive, the system failed to boot into it.
I forget what the error said. It maybe said that it could not fine new_root or something.
I tried something like the following, by I don’t know what it does.
cryptsetup reencrypt --decrypt --header new_file device_path
I’m not sure what it does and what the --header part does. It was taking too long, so interrupted with a reboot. Now its saying their device is not a valid LUKS device.
The command had the --decrypt option so I thought that would make it decrypt.
I was following step 1.3 here, in trying to “decrypting LUKS2 devices in-place.”
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Removing_system_encryption
This seems reasonable. And you’re right.
But there is absolutely no way that interrupting such an operation with a forced power-cycle can be safe. In fact it’s an almost guaranteed way to put a data partition into a irrecoverable state.
When it comes to storage operations, you either let them fail, or complete. Interrupting file system modifications is a HUGE no-no.