14.1.3. .gvfs: Permission Denied

Question:

When trying to install the ELDK, I get error messages like this for each and every package that gets installed:

Preparing...   ################### 100%
1: rpm...   ################### 100%
Error: Failed to stat /home/wd/.gvfs: Permission Denied

This happens even though I run the installer as root.

Answer:

Even though flagged as an error, these messages are harmless warnings that can be safely ignored. Before the RPM tool starts to install a package, it checks if there is sufficient space for it in the file system. Unfortunately it is dumb and checks all mounted file systems for space, but the permissions of the ".gvfs" directory (the mount point for the Gnome Virtual File System) do not permit this.

Note:

Actually the messages are not printed despite the fact that you are running as root, but because you run as root. You have permissions to check the "$HOME/.gvfs" directory, while root gets an error:

$ df -h /home/wd/.gvfs
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
gvfs-fuse-daemon         0     0     0   -  /home/wd/.gvfs
$ sudo df -h /home/wd/.gvfs
df: `/home/wd/.gvfs': Permission denied
df: no file systems processed