no no need for sudo. start electrum from a terminal and repeat the process of whole wallet file encryption. electrum will post debugging messages in the terminal. upload those onto pastebin.com and share the link here so we can take a look.
The terminal shows only this
"sni-qt/10318" WARN 14:12:21.422 void StatusNotifierItemFactory::connectToSnw() Invalid interface to SNW_SERVICE
** (python:10318): WARNING **: Invalid borders specified for theme pixmap:
/usr/share/themes/Breeze/gtk-2.0/../assets/line-h.png,
borders don't fit within the image
** (python:10318): WARNING **: invalid source position for vertical gradient
** (python:10318): WARNING **: invalid source position for vertical gradient
** (python:10318): WARNING **: invalid source position for vertical gradient
** (python:10318): WARNING **: invalid source position for vertical gradient
After that Electrum stops responding! And I have to kill Electrum process! That's all!