What is this .gvfs directory?

[Ron Yorston]

Bradley <pursley001 at comcast.net> wrote:
>On 07/22/2009 09:01 AM, Bradley wrote:
>> On 07/22/2009 07:17 AM, davide wrote:
>>> Bradley<pursley001<at> comcast.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> I have my system do regular automated backups and just noticed that the
>>>> backups have been failing do to a ".gvfs" directory
>>>
>>> there is a similar thread quite recent.
>>> search into the archives, there is a solution (a dirty hack maybe) 
>>> for the
>>> backup issue.
>> Okay, read the thread but apparently there is no solution to this 
>> problem. Has anyone tried permanently "breaking" or disabling fuse so 
>> that it doesn't create the directory in the first place?
>
>Final update on this thread for me:
>
>Well, I decided to "break" fuse by making the executables in the /bin 
>and /sbin directories unavailable and, guess what? The directory still 
>appears but with normal access rights thereby fixing my problem. All 
>other system operations seem to be working normally except that I have 
>to enter the root password for mounting temporary files systems, which 
>is fine since I'm the only one that uses them on my system. This will be 
>my workaround that works great!

According to a thread on the fedora-test list it's possible to prevent
the gvfs-fuse-daemon starting by setting an environment variable:

On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 23:05 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 22:54 -0400, Christopher L Tubbs II wrote:
> > Can anybody tell me what this gvfs-fuse-daemon is doing mounted to a 
> > dotfile in my home directory? (.gvfs). It's new to F9 apparently (I 
> > never noticed it in F8, and it definitely wasn't there in F7).
> > 
> > Why do I need it and can I get rid of it?
> 
> You need it if you want to be able to use posix applications on all
> sorts of exotic mounts. E.g editing text files on a gphoto mount, or in
> a mounted archive. 
> 
> To get rid of it: 
> 
> GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE=1
> export GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE

However, I've been unable to find out where to set that environment
variable.  Although gvfsd is run as the user logging in it doesn't
have that users environment.

Ron