rsync errors - Httqm's Docs

rsync is run
- with the -t / --times flag
- or with -a, which implies -t
on the destination side :
- files belong to apache:apache
- rsync is run by stuart, who's a member of the apache group

This looks pretty similar to this error, albeit I've found no strict evidence / clear explanation yet. I can't either touch nor chmod files on the destination.

Only the file owner can change the file timestamp.

Workarounds :

omit the -t / --times option (or -a)
add the --omit-dir-times option
if possible, change the file owner on the destination
run rsync as root (should work but doesn't sound like the best idea, might have some unexpected consequences)

I got this error while rsyncing data from a local filesystem to a network share served by Samba :

rsync: [generator] symlink "/sambaMountPoint/symlink" -> "/sambaMountPoint/path/to/someFile" failed: Operation not supported (95)

This is not an rsync bug / limitation : rsync can't create a symlink on a Samba share, and nobody could (at least, with current/default options ) : trying to create a symlink there manually would fail similarly.

How to enable support of symlinks on Samba shares ?

It's all in the title :

I'm trying to rsync data with the -a flag enabled (which implies -p)
the user running rsync :
- has rwx access permissions on :
  - /path/to/file : the file itself
  - /path/to/ : its parent directory
  which was granted via extended ACL
- is not the owner of /path/to/file

To effectively preserve permissions (-p), rsync requires the same permission level as to run chmod (source).
On the destination side of my rsync operation :
- I can : touch /path/to/file
- I can't : chmod /path/to/file
It turns out that some privileges are required to run chmod, which explains why it failed at the preceding step.

As a workaround, if you're not interested in preserving file permissions, you can disable rsync's -p with --no-perms.

While experimenting / debugging rsync commands, you may end with very basic commands

with / without the trailing slash / (doesn't matter here)
with no option

such as :

rsync /src/foo /dest

actually transferring nothing and ending on :

skipping directory .

This is because -r (either explicit or implied by -a) is missing and rsync has nothing to transfer.

This message looks more like a warning than an actual error (?). Anyway, it seems to be related to a local ssh agent issue

Could be caused by :

local process(es ?) missing the result of eval $(ssh-agent)
or concurrent ssh-agent processes :
1. Check it with pgrep ssh-agent
2. "kill -1" the extra processes

I experimented a bit on the machine having the issue, but after playing around I've not been able to reproduce it anymore. So more details someday (... maybe )

Full error message :

protocol version mismatch -- is your shell clean?
(see the rsync man page for an explanation)
rsync error: protocol incompatibility (code 2) at compat.c(176) [sender=3.1.1]

man rsync + searching for mismatch gives further information : while trying to rsync over SSH, it seems that the remote shell opening returns some unexpected data. To figure this out :

ssh bob@remoteHost /bin/true

In normal situations, this should return nothing. Otherwise, the error message you'll see is the reason why rsync fails.
For instance, when it said This account is currently not available, it's because Bob had his shell set to /usr/sbin/nologin in /etc/passwd.

Changing Bob's shell to /bin/sh fixed the issue.

The error has to do with how the nested double/single quotes are treated when the variables are expanded. Looks like rsync dislikes its arguments being quoted : rsync "--dry-run"

The complete error message is :

ksh: rsync: not found
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: remote command not found (code 127) at io.c(600) [receiver=3.0.6]

This is caused by the PATH variable not having the same value on both ends of the connection.

rsync --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync [other rsync parameters]

/usr/local/bin/rsync is the path to the rsync binary on the Solaris machine.

rsync errors - even rsync can go bananas!

rsync: failed to set times on "/path/to/file": Operation not permitted (1)

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rsync: [generator] symlink failed: Operation not supported (95)

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rsync: failed to set permissions on "/path/to/file": Operation not permitted

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skipping directory .

Error reading response length from authentication socket.

Situation

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protocol version mismatch -- is your shell clean?

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Solution

Unexpected remote arg

ksh: rsync: not found when trying to rsync files between a Linux and a Solaris machine

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Solution