On my Fedora box, ranger 1.6.1 will throw exceptions as follows when /etc directory is version controlled by git (etckeeper).

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/core/main.py", line 133, in main
    fm.loop()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/core/fm.py", line 288, in loop
    self.enter_dir(self.thistab.path)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/core/actions.py", line 450, in enter_dir
    result = self.thistab.enter_dir(path, history=history)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/core/tab.py", line 141, in enter_dir
    self.assign_cursor_positions_for_subdirs()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/core/tab.py", line 90, in assign_cursor_positions_for_subdirs
    path.move_to_obj(last_path)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/container/directory.py", line 435, in move_to_obj
    self.load_content_once(schedule=False)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/container/directory.py", line 488, in load_content_once
    self.load_content(a, *k)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/container/directory.py", line 333, in load_content
    for _ in self.load_generator:
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/container/directory.py", line 263, in load_bit_by_bit
    item.load_vcs(self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/container/fsobject.py", line 264, in load_vcs
    (self.path, err), bad=True)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ranger/core/actions.py", line 121, in notify
    raise Exception(str(text))
Exception: Can not load vcs data on /etc: git error on /etc. Command: git status --porcelain

The issue is /etc/.git cannot be accessed by a normal user. IMO in such case at most a warning rather than an error should be throwed out. It is particularly annoying since I am going to debug an encoding issue, and this error makes "ranger -d" abort early...