If you are trying to backup a Linux system using rsync or tar you will probably get an error like .gvfs permission denied file in a users home dir causing an rsync backup to fail, you error will look similar to:

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receiving file list ... rsync: readlink_stat("/home/username/.gvfs") failed: Permission denied (13)
done
username/.xsession-errors

sent 42 bytes  received 1746118 bytes  36003.30 bytes/sec
total size is 31178158898  speedup is 17855.27
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(1298) [generator=2.6.8]

Delete .gvfs file Linux

Your best option is to exclude this file from your backup, however if you need to delete the .gvfs then you can do so with the following:

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umount /home/username/.gvfs
rm -rf /home/username/.gvfs

Either options should resolve the problem and your tar / rsync backup should now function again as expected.