weird permissions /var/lib/gdm/.gvfs

[Will Woods]

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 21:15 +0000, Johann B. Gudmundsson wrote:
> Anyone else seeing weird permissions on /var/lib/gdm/.gvfs
> 
> Had an error access error on  /var/lib/gdm/.gvfs
> 
> ls -alh reveals ...
> d?????????  ? ?    ?       ?                ? .gvfs
> 
> [root at localhost gdm]# chmod 0700 .gvfs
> chmod: cannot access `.gvfs': Permission denied
> 
> [root at localhost gdm]# rm -rf .gvfs
> rm: cannot remove `.gvfs': Permission denied
> 
> [root at localhost gdm]# stat .gvfs
> stat: cannot stat `.gvfs': Permission denied
> 
> [root at localhost gdm]# ls -il .gvfs
> ls: cannot access .gvfs: Permission denied
>  
> Anyone with master degree on how to remove this file...

Don't.

Beyond the obvious "why the hell would you go around deleting files
willy-nilly unless you *want* to break your system" speech, here's the
deal - .gvfs is a FUSE filesystem mount point.

When a user logs in, ~/.gvfs gets mounted for them. It's how GNOME
exports stuff mounted by gvfs to non-gvfs stuff, and it's restricted to
the user who created it.

When GDM is running, the system considers the gdm user to be logged in.
Guess where GDM's homedir is? yep: /var/lib/gdm.

I'll bet you saw the "Permission denied: /var/lib/gdm/.gvfs" message
when you tried to install/remove an RPM. RPM tries to statvfs() all the
mounted filesystems - including the FUSE ones. 

That message should probably be suppressed, but it's not harmful and
that file should not be removed.

-w
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