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I am using Debian Wheezy with Xfce and Thunar. Thunar (and other similer managers) enables e.g. connecting to SSH server using SFTP address like sftp://mysvr/ and browsing it like a local folder. I normally access my remote box via command line, but occasionally I appreciate this GUI sugar.

However, in default configuration, this has a pretty annoying downside: File systems accessed this way are automatically mounted under folder $HOME/.gvfs, which creates quite a nightmare for tasks that involve traversing through home folder (typically dotfile searching, or analyzing disk space usage issues).

GNOME 2.2 RNs say:

GVFS also offers a FUSE mountpoint in ~/.gvfs/ so that GVFS mounts can be exposed to legacy applications using standard POSIX IO.

So I guess it's possible to turn this off (I assume by legacy they don't mean Nautilus and the likes).

However, I can't seem to find any information on how to do it. Any pointers?

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    The -x option to du will solve your analyzing disk space usage problem. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 19:14
  • This question is probably outdated, now, since exactly these issues were addressed by moving the GVFS mount point to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gvfs, which typically locates it on a path outside of $HOME such as /run/user/$UID/gvfs. That should be in use on all current systems which support Gvfs/Gio. $HOME/.gvfs is a legacy path. Commented Dec 7, 2017 at 3:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Gvfsd(1) states:

ENVIRONMENT GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE If this environment variable is set, gvfsd will not start the fuse filesystem.

So if you configure your display manager or ~/.profile to set this variable it should work.

On the other hand most unix utilities have switches to disable recursion into other filesystems (mostly -x, for find it's -xdev)

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  • Thanks, I'm almost embarrassed I did not know about this -x switch. Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 19:54
  • Also, before I get to test this, wouldn't this disable the whole feature (using FTPS in managers directly)? Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 19:55
  • The variable should only disable ~/.gfvs. Access via GIO should still work. Or do you mean -x? Then I didn't understand your comment. Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 20:45
  • No, you understood correctly. I see it's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 21:10
  • Finally made it work, thanks. Just one more question: Where did you get the manual? It's not on my box, and I can't even find any official documentation... Commented Mar 17, 2013 at 1:25

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