~/.gvfs is annoying for sysadmins

[Tom H]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:46 AM, Tim H <bizdev at pwnspeak.com> wrote:
> 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.

I agree with you that it's weird that it's inaccessible to root - and annoying.

Given the GNOME developers' recent response/attitude in the
laptop-lid-closing story, I'm sure that they'll be very open to the
idea turning gvfs into an optional component...

Why don't you blacklist "~/.gvfs/" in your backup routines since it's
just a mount point and you're presumably backing up whatever share(s)
is(are) being mounted there?