Rogue gvfs processes

luciochiappetti · December 29, 2010, 10:52am

I have recently moved to suse 11.3 from 9.2. I have a series of crontab scripts which do things like checking existence and permission of files (tripwire and homegrown), backup things on a second disk etc.

Now some of those scripts (which all worked perfectly under 9.2) do hang on insufficient permissions on an empty directory ~/.gvfs which I am not at all aware of creating.

If I try to delete it I get
rm: cannot remove directory `.gvfs’: Device or resource busy

Looking at lsof output I find it is open to a process /usr/lib/gvfs//gvfs-fuse-daemon
which I am not aware to start.

More curiously, a ps output shows a number of processes (which I am not aware to start) running under my user id, all reparented to init
1 18199 lucio /usr/lib/notification-daemon-1.0/notification-daemon
1 18219 lucio /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd
1 18224 lucio /usr/lib/gvfs//gvfs-fuse-daemon /poseidon/lucio/.gvfs
1 20497 root dbus-launch --autolaunch bce8d279423663d4735b9a3c000003e1 --binary-syntax --close-stderr
1 20498 root /bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
1 20730 lucio dbus-launch --autolaunch bce8d279423663d4735b9a3c000003e1 --binary-syntax --close-stderr
1 20731 lucio /bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
1 20733 lucio /usr/lib/GConf/2/gconfd-2

Last time I logged out and logged in again and they disappeared. But then sometimes they appeared again without me being aware of starting them.

What is the purpose of those processes, what is starting them, and is there a way to inhibit this if they are useless (and annoying as it looks) ?

BTW, if it matters, my window manager is fvwm.
I also tend to leave the machine logged in during the night, locked with the xlock screeensaver.

hcvv · December 29, 2010, 11:57am

I can add that as KDE user, I also have that directory. And it refuses to be backed up using rsync. Which isn’t much to worry about, but what is it?

robin_listas · December 29, 2010, 2:08pm

On 2010-12-29 11:06, luciochiappetti wrote:
> If I try to delete it I get
> rm: cannot remove directory `.gvfs’: Device or resource busy

Leave that directory alone. It is a virtual filesytem belonging exclusively
to the user, needed by the system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gvfs

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · December 29, 2010, 2:18pm

hcvv wrote:

>
> I can add that as KDE user, I also have that directory. And it refuses
> to be backed up using -rsync-. Which isn’t much to worry about, but what
> is it?
>
>
I also wondered sometimes when find told me it cannot read .gvfs why I need
the gnome virtual file system on kde, everytime I forget to look up why it
is needed. I just tested now what happens if I uninstall the gvfs packages
(only did a dryrun so I did not really delete them) and it turned out that
nothing depends on them.
Sorry that I cannot give a solution, but I am also interested in the answers
what we need it for.
A quick google session did not tell me much about its usefullness for non-
gnome systems

martin_helm · December 29, 2010, 2:20pm

Carlos E. R. wrote:

> On 2010-12-29 11:06, luciochiappetti wrote:
> Leave that directory alone. It is a virtual filesytem belonging
> exclusively to the user, needed by the system.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gvfs
>
Found that also but what is its use for other than gnome systems, we have
not gio but kio in kde and this does not depend on gvfs - so why is it
there.

robin_listas · December 29, 2010, 3:03pm

On 2010-12-29 14:18, martin_helm wrote:

> Sorry that I cannot give a solution, but I am also interested in the answers
> what we need it for.

I don’t see that anything needs to be solved >:-)

> A quick google session did not tell me much about its usefullness for non-
> gnome systems

Because probably you have used a gnome program.

If you object to gvfs, open a bugzilla report.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

hcvv · December 29, 2010, 3:19pm

I see something that could be solved.

When this is intended to be more or less hidden from the user (of a program that happens to call itself a Gnome program), why then advertises it itself by generating error/warning messages when that innocent user tries to back up things from his home directory? I know of other programs that create config files and the like in ones home directory (often as so calles “hidden” ones), but they never give any problems in this aspect.

luciochiappetti · December 29, 2010, 3:41pm

Well,** I AM** the user (as well as root of my machine) and I tend not to like the idea of having a virtual filesystem I’ve never asked for, or a process which starts with me being unaware of it.

Incidentally when I logout the two gvfs processes disappear and I can remove the directory.

When I login again under my fvwm session, there are three processes starting with my userid but without my awareness and reparented to init. They are
dbus-launch --autolaunch … , /bin/dbus-daemon --fork … and /usr/lib/GConf/2/gconfd-2

The gvfsd processes do not start at login, but at some random time later. I found for instance .gvfs reappeared today at 13:42. I tried to find what I was doing then. I found I used openoffice at 13:41, but apparently it’s not the culprit (I logged out and logged in again, did a lot of little tests with openoffice, and in two hours .gvfs has not reappeared).

martin_helm · December 29, 2010, 4:59pm

Carlos E. R. wrote:

> On 2010-12-29 14:18, martin_helm wrote:
>
> I don’t see that anything needs to be solved >:-)
>
I second hcvv. The demon requests resources - I have an older netbook around
for this a superflous demon which takes up to 30 MB is not that good (just
checked that).

>> A quick google session did not tell me much about its usefullness for
>> non- gnome systems
>
> Because probably you have used a gnome program.
>
No. On the two machines in my footer I could not care less and there it is
logical to have it since both have a full gnome and a full kde environment.
But not for a pure kde environment I test on the netbook.
To be sure I installed now a kde live with default settings in vmware (to
simulate what I have on the netbook) and see there is first no gvfs
installed. On the first run of yast software management it pulls
automatically in a lot of additional things (as usual) and it contains
packages like fuse and gvfs and would like to understand why.

>
> If you object to gvfs, open a bugzilla report.
>
We discuss here a general question, nobody spoke about a bug here.
From what do you read in my posts that I object against gvfs? The discussion
is not even near to any conclusion but full of open questions.

luciochiappetti · December 29, 2010, 6:01pm

I found this reference in another forum. Suggests setting an environment variable during xinitrc to disable gvfs.

But is written for a different Linux flavour. Any idea of a robust implementation of that for Suse (specially when using fvwm ? It looks like the process chain is something like this

  1  2410 root       /usr/bin/kdm

2410 2480 root /usr/bin/Xorg -br :0 vt7 -nolisten tcp -auth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-JGo5ja
2410 2483 root -:0
2483 2776 lucio /usr/bin/fvwm
2776 2966 lucio /usr/bin/ssh-agent /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

luciochiappetti · December 29, 2010, 6:24pm

I tried this solution (with the idea it should be per-user). I created in my home dir a ~/.xinitrc like this

#!/bin/bash

GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE=1
export GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE
. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

which calls the system one. Apparently it does no harm, and my environment inherits GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE.

No idea if I did it correctly (a bash script like the one in /etc while my default shell is tcsh), nor if it does what required.
Any comment gratefully awaited

hcvv · December 29, 2010, 6:36pm

It does not matter what your default shell (I think you mean your login shell) is. The shebang in line 1 tells the loader what to use.

luciochiappetti · December 29, 2010, 6:51pm

Yeah … I was just worried about extra shells processes in the chain.
The equivalent of the /etc/X11/xinitrc invocation now appears to be

25100 25227 lucio /usr/bin/ssh-agent /bin/bash /poseidon/lucio/.xinitrc

Looks like there is an extra shell, but is not permanent … so it won’t matter, I guess.
I wonder however if the solution cures my problem (no way to tell since when the .gvfs directory appears is unpredictable)

robin_listas · December 30, 2010, 3:20am

On 2010-12-29 16:06, luciochiappetti wrote:
> Well,* I AM* the user (as well as root of my machine) and I tend not to
> like the idea of having a virtual filesystem I’ve never asked for, or a
> process which starts with me being unaware of it.

There are hundreds of processes that run without your explicit consent -
this is just one more, that has a few bugs or side effects that make you
notice it. >:-)

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

robin_listas · December 30, 2010, 3:33am

On 2010-12-29 16:59, martin_helm wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:

>> Because probably you have used a gnome program.
>>
> No. On the two machines in my footer I could not care less and there it is
> logical to have it since both have a full gnome and a full kde environment.
> But not for a pure kde environment I test on the netbook.

I’m sure that you still have a few gnome components in that kde
environment. For example, Firefox pulls in some gtk libs, and these pull
other things…

> automatically in a lot of additional things (as usual) and it contains
> packages like fuse and gvfs and would like to understand why.

Fuse is used for many things. For example, it is used to access NTFS
partitions.

>> If you object to gvfs, open a bugzilla report.
>>
> We discuss here a general question, nobody spoke about a bug here.
> From what do you read in my posts that I object against gvfs? The discussion
> is not even near to any conclusion but full of open questions.

Not you in particular. You, plural.

You are trying to remove a component of the system, that is needed. What
for exactly, I do not know. There are many components in Linux that have
appeared since the first year I started using Linux, that I have no idea
how they work. Hal, udev, what for do I need them? I’m happy with manual
mounting of devices.

So remove hal! Remove udev!

But that is not going to happen.

I do not longer care about all those things I no longer understand, as long
as they work, however they do and whatever they do. Don’t worry, be happy

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

robin_listas · December 30, 2010, 3:33am

On 2010-12-29 15:36, hcvv wrote:
>
> I see something that could be solved.
>
> When this is intended to be more or less hidden from the user (of a
> program that happens to call itself a Gnome program), why then
> advertises it itself by generating error/warning messages when that
> innocent user tries to back up things from his home directory?

All backup programs have to be told to ignore /proc and /sys. This is just
one more directory to add to the ignore list.

> I know of
> other programs that create config files and the like in ones home
> directory (often as so calles “hidden” ones), but they never give any
> problems in this aspect.

Any directory with similar permissions would give problems if root tries to
access it. I always thought that root could read anything, but perhaps that
is not always so.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

luciochiappetti · December 30, 2010, 10:34am

Slightly offtopic, but probably the participants to this thread know the answer to an unanswered question I made already elsewhere.

Under suse 11.3 (and under my favourite **fvwm **window manager) three main applications (firefox, acroread and openoffice) show a badly legible top menu bar (and menus), white text on dark foreground. According to the fvwm author, it is not a window manager issue, and cannot be cured with good old styles X resources : that’s because such applications expect some gnome hints.

Any easy idea by which an fvwm user could convince such applications to use the good old legible black foreground on light gray background for the menus ?

(for firefox only I found a workaround. I hate “themes” but I found that using the lightweight theme (or “persona”) called “simple fox” I obtain the result I want)

robin_listas · December 30, 2010, 11:33am

On 2010-12-30 10:36, luciochiappetti wrote:

> Slightly offtopic, but probably the participants to this thread know
> the answer to an unanswered question I made already elsewhere.

Actually, no
It is unanswered because we don’t know. At least, I’m sure I don’t.
Yes, I saw the question elsewhere.

> Under suse 11.3 (and under my favourite *fvwm *window manager) three
> main applications (firefox, acroread and openoffice) show a badly
> legible top menu bar (and menus), white text on dark foreground.
> According to the fvwm author, it is not a window manager issue, and
> cannot be cured with good old styles X resources : that’s because such
> applications expect some gnome hints.

Quite possible.

> Any easy idea by which an fvwm user could convince such applications to
> use the good old legible black foreground on light gray background for
> the menus ?

Dunno. Perhaps you have to fire up gnome and configure there.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · December 30, 2010, 2:32pm

Carlos E. R. wrote:

> On 2010-12-29 15:36, hcvv wrote:
>>
>> I see something that could be solved.
>>
>> When this is intended to be more or less hidden from the user (of a
>> program that happens to call itself a Gnome program), why then
>> advertises it itself by generating error/warning messages when that
>> innocent user tries to back up things from his home directory?
>
> All backup programs have to be told to ignore /proc and /sys. This is just
> one more directory to add to the ignore list.
>
That is a workaround (to exclude .gvfs), but for .gvfs it is a bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/254095
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/225361
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=560658

It is also annoying for many ubuntu and mint users for which the standard
backup tools for the home folders fail.