Directory that a user can read, but root can't?

From: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=534284

This is all unfortunate, but its a decision that has been taken by the fuse people at the kernel level (user others than the one who mounted the fs can't access it, including root) and there is nothing we can do about it.

Also see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gvfs/+bug/225361

The solution seems to be to update your /etc/fuse.conf and enable the user_allow_other option. You may also need to then get gvfs to pass the allow_root or allow_other, but I am not sure how to do this.

Of course it may be much easier to simply give up on all the GUI tools like gvfs and mount your filesystems from command line where you have complete control of exactly how something gets mounted.

The .gvfs directory is the Gnome VFS userspace filesystem that provides a direct filesystem path for virtual filesystems (e.g. remote samba mounts, webdav mounts) so Gnome can pass paths to programs that aren't VFS-aware when operating on remote files.

Since it's a FUSE mount & application it can deny permissions to root - the agent performing the access checks in this case is the FUSE application, not the kernel.

By default the gvfs daemon only allows the owner to traverse the directory.