gvfs-fuse doesn't work (completely) with the sftp interface

[bj0]

When using the SFTP frontend via gvfs FUSE, there is a bug that causes some file operations to fail. Since this also happens with other SFTP implementations, and with very simple commands (see below), the bug is likely to be in gvfs FUSE -- although that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't work around it.

Some applications appear to work, like vi and gedit, but some do not, like OpenOffice?.

You can see that this bug is present by creating a simple text file: file1, then:

> cat file1 > file2
> cat file2 >> file1
cat: write error: Operation not supported

file1 is zero-length after the second cat.

This bug is present when I use gvfs to connect to an openssh-server also.