FileVault did not open home folder-- Can't login

Question

Okay, so just today I upgraded to Leopard, after the CD finished downlaoding, I logged into my account, and the Updater wanted me to update to 10.5.1, so I did. Updater asked me to restart, and after clicking the restart button, FileVault (I have it enabled) asked me if I wanted to recover disk space (it does this all the time) I skipped the process, and my computer restarted. It brought me to the login screen, and I clicked on my account, entered my password, and then a window pops up, telling me:
"Your FileVault-protected home folder did not open and needs to be repaired.
Click OK to repair the folder and continue logging in.
Click Cancel Login to log in as a different user."
I chose okay, then waited a few hours to see if anything would happen. It didn't. This account is the only adminastrator account on this computer...
Anyone know what to do??

Answer 1

Understand that what has happened is that your FileVaulted volume, which is simply a large, glorified encrypted sparsefile, has become corrupt and requires repair. The problem is getting access to it and performing the repair. Please understand that the following fix worked for me and may not work for you.
First, chances are you have only one user on your computer. Even if you have two, we should start fresh with a new admin user. The following steps will reset your Mac to think that is has just received a brand new setup of OSX:
1. Reboot
2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
* mount -uw /
* rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
* shutdown -h now
Now, booting up your computer, enjoy the pretty light show, take a large breath, hold it for 10 seconds, then let it go. Grab a cup of coffee or a loved one and cuddle during this inspiring intro. Now, back to business. Setup your account as you would in any other circumstance. Just make sure you dont name your username the same as the one you used on this computer before. Make sure your password is longer than 8 characters as well (or so I have heard).
Now that you are inside your computer, you see that you still do not have access to your data. Lets take out the crowbar and proceed with the following steps:
4. Go to Macintosh HD/Users/ and locate the folder named the PREVIOUS administrator's account name which you cannot access. Click on the folder and go to FILE | GET INFO and under Sharing and Permissions ADD yourself as a user with Read & Write privileges.
5. Go inside this folder and perform the same command on the Username.sparseimage file as in step 4. Note the path of this file (i.e. /Users/UserName/UserName.sparseimage)
6. Go to Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities/Terminal
7. Type: sudo hdiutil attach /Users/username/username.sparseimage -nomount
8. A bunch of funky things will happen, but it eventually should list a number of volumes, one with an HFS attached to it, note if it says disk1s1 or disk2s2 or whatever.
9. Type: sudo fsck_hfs -f /dev/rdisk2s2 (rdisk2s2 being where the HFS was from step 8, adding an "r" at the front)
If fsck_hfs bails because of too many errors, just repeat until it says the FS is fine. That irks the bejeezus out of me as well, but has always worked for me so far.
10. Type: sudo fsck_hfs -frd /dev/rdiskXsY
This will rebuild the catalog file, which was my problem.
Now, finally, go back to that path where you found your sparsimage file, double-click it, enter your password and you just may be able to read the data! Success!!!
If you are smart, like I am at this very second, back up the data immediately to DVD. Once you have your backups, reinstall everything and just drop your data back in. Make it clean!
Remember, FileVault is a bitchen feature! But if you are ignorant enough, like I was, not to back up your data, whose fault is that? Cheers!