The New Hotness

The backup scripts running on Mary’s folks’ PC kvetched on each backup:

WARNING: Some files and/or directories in /home/ only transferred partially during rsync operation
WARNING: /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily: completed, but with some warnings

Poking around showed that the problem came from the .gvfs “directory” tucked into each home directory, which produced this unenlightening ls -al result:

d????????? ? ? ? ? ? .gvfs

Come to find out that it’s an old problem with mysterious causes that should be fixed by now; evidently I triggered it by installing basic Ubuntu-with-Unity and then installing the Xbubuntu desktop. Or something like that.

Anyhow, the solution workaround involves an rsnapshot configuration entry that bypasses that directory:

exclude .gvfs

And then it Just Works.