What is this .gvfs directory?

[Alan Cox]

> I see a message when I use rsync of tar to make backups, but I
> interpreted this message as: "this directory is inaccessible, so it
> won't be backed up" but I don't think that the backup is interrupted for
> other directories. Is it?
> 
> For me this directory is empty, so.... If other directories are saved, I
> don't care.

In the case of rsync at least it breaks the --delete part of removing old
stale files from the backup. Rsync has a paranoid and very sensible
policy that errors mean do the sync but don't delete old stuff in case.