What is this .gvfs directory?

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:12:55 -0500
Bradley <pursley001 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I have my system do regular automated backups and just noticed that the 
> backups have been failing do to a ".gvfs" directory in one of the user's 
> home directories.  This folder can not be accessed or deleted until I 
> drop to at least runlevel 2 but then, in the normal runlevel, when the 
> user logs back on, the directory appears again with the same problems.  
> There is absolutely no information about this in the help docs and am 
> wondering how I can either keep the directory from coming back or to 
> make it accessable?

Its gnome vfs magic. There are few ways to get rid of it other than
running a better desktop. It breaks rsync as well horribly because its
a misimplemented mess that doesn't provide proper behaviour. The theory
is sound but the implementation (which is not entirely Gnome's fault
here) misbehaves horribly.

If you are using rsync then simply excluding ".gvfs" should do the trick
nicely.

Alan