~/.gvfs is annoying for sysadmins

[Tim H]

On 03/11/2011 09:26 PM, travis+ml-ubuntu-users at subspacefield.org wrote:
> I can't even stat the directory (actually a mount point) as root.
>
> Trying to ls people's home directories (as root) gives an error.
>
> rsync as root bitches because the directory isn't stat-able, and due
> to that error, refuses to do other things, like delete files from the
> target.
>
> Odd that a normal user can see it, but root can't.
>
> I can't lsattr it, either.  Even as the user who owns it - I get a
> "inappropriate ioctl for device"
>
> How am I supposed to do remote backups if I can't talk to the file
> system without errors?
>
> And how am I to figure out where all the mountpoints for these things
> might be?  Do my backup scripts have to parse /etc/passwd and extract
> everyone's home directory, and then build an exclude list dynamically?
>
> I guess I could avoid crossing file system boundaries, but that's
> whitelisting, and it works great until you add a new file system one
> day and forget to add it to your backup whitelist.
>

Agreed.  I haven't really looked into it however, but I would like to do 
away with it completely.  It even comes pre-installed on Xubuntu, which 
uses Gnome sparingly.

Tim H.