du gives error : "du: cannot access `./.gvfs': Permission denied"du: cannot access `.

MihirSahasrabudhe · 12-19-2009, 07:26 AM

Hi,

I am using Ubuntu 9.04.
I want to calculate the disk usage of users on a system - those in /home/. For this I used the du command.

As root user, when I type
# du /home/mihir
an error message "du: cannot access `./.gvfs': Permission denied", is displayed. Using the exclude option didn't help.
# cd /home/mihir
# du --exclude=".\/.gvfs"

I cannot understand the "Permission denied" message because I key in these command as root. Need some help, please.

Thank You

PresGas · 12-19-2009, 09:25 AM

The ~/.gvfs directory is a FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace) filesystem fronted by Gnome.
See this for a quickie rundown of FUSE: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

There is a decent discussion of the .gvfs and root access here:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/34333

That references bug reports on both Gnome and Ubu, so it really is distribution agnostic.

Hope that helps!

eco · 12-19-2009, 09:27 AM

What are the permissions of .gvfs?

Code:

ls -ld /home/mihir/.gvfs
ls -ld /home/mihir

Might get us started

MihirSahasrabudhe · 12-21-2009, 06:29 AM

The output of ls -ld /home/mihir gives

.
.
dr-x------ 2 mihir mihir 0 2009-12-21 17:51 .gvfs/
.
.

PresGas · 12-29-2009, 11:10 AM

Okay, now what about the output of "ls -ld /home/mihir/.gvfs"?