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After I use bdemount to decrypt a Bitlocker encrypted volume on my Linux system, how do I close the volume?

First I decrypt the volume like this

sudo bdemount -p MYPASSWORD /dev/sda1 /mnt/bdem1

This will create a file /mnt/bdem1/bde1 (930 GB =~ size of disk /dev/sda1).

Then I mount the file like this

sudo mount -t ntfs /mnt/bdem1/bde1 /mnt/sda1_ntfs

I now have the NTFS volume mounted under /mnt/sda1_ntfs and can access it.

Now for the reverse operation. I can unmount the NTFS volume

sudo unmount /mnt/sda1_ntfs1

But the "decrypted" volume under /mnt/bdem1/bde1 still exists. How do I "close" this one without damaging anything? To my surprise the file /mnt/bdem1/bde1 even persists after I log out and then log in again.
I was expecting something like a bdeumount command, but there is no such thing and the man pages don't mention this "reverse operation" at all.

My system uses Ubuntu 20.04 with bdemount 20190102.

1 Answer 1

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libbde/bdemount uses FUSE to create the volume so you can unmount/close it using fusermount -u /mnt/bdem1

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  • When I try this, all I get is "fusermount: failed to unmount /mnt/sdc2_bde: Device or resource busy" each time every time.
    – andrsmllr
    Nov 16, 2020 at 10:00
  • You must first unmount the NTFS filesystem on the BDE device. This is what I do to mount the device: sudo bdemount /dev/sdX /mnt/bde -p <password> and sudo mount -o loop,ro /mnt/bde/bde1 /mnt/ntfs and to unmount it: sudo umount /mnt/ntfs and sudo fusermount -u /mnt/bde. Nov 16, 2020 at 10:09

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