$HOME/.gvfs cannot be deleted after user is deleted

[Andrew Simpson]

In Ubuntu Hardy Heron, if a new user is created using the System->Administration->Users and Groups dialogue, the gvfs-fuse folder /home/newuser/.gvfs is created.

This folder cannot be accessed by any other user, including the root user. This means the new user's folder cannot be deleted once the user is deleted:

Listing folder as root user (for my normal user) outputs as below:

adpsimpson@adpsimpson-laptop:~$ sudo ls -la /home/adpsimpson | grep gvfs
ls: cannot access .gvfs: Permission denied
?????????? ? ? ? ? ? .gvfs

Listing for 'mount' given below:
adpsimpson@adpsimpson-laptop:~$ mount | grep gvfs
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/adpsimpson/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=adpsimpson)

Even after the user is deleted, the entry in 'mount' remains. This makes it hard to completely delete a user from a system.

Although there are other bugs relating to gvfs in launchpad, none seem to cover the inability to delete this folder when deleting a user from the system.

[Andrew Simpson (adpsimpson-gmail)]

I should have said this is only in Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) - I haven't seen it in any previous version of Ubuntu.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, you can't delete the directory because it's mounted, you can use fusermount -u .gvfs on it to unmount it and then remove the directory, that's not a bug

[Andrew Simpson (adpsimpson-gmail)]

I've changed this back to being a new bug - there is something misbehaving, even if it is not the actual deleting of the directory.

The folder ~/.gvfs should not remain mounted when the user is fully logged out - for it to remain mounted is confusing and bad for usability.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the issue is known already, read bug #212789