When making an rsync of a directory with mode 0555 and attributes, there is an error on any included file creation: failed: Permission denied (13) Smallest test directory: # coriolis:/tmp/test % ls -@alO total 0 drwxr-xr-x 4 dan wheel - 136 Aug 8 19:16 . drwxrwxrwt 15 root wheel - 544 Aug 8 19:01 .. dr-xr-xr-x@ 2 dan wheel - 102 Aug 8 17:54 dir+attr com.apple.FinderInfo 32 dr-xr-xr-x 2 dan wheel - 102 Aug 8 19:13 dir+noattr 0. Versions in use Note: this is note the installed version with MacOS X (2.6.9) but the latest one built from MacPorts (3.1.2). The OS is OS X 10.10.5 (on source and destination) rsync --version rsync version 3.1.2 protocol version 31 Copyright (C) 1996-2015 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others. Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/ Capabilities: 64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints, socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs, xattrs, iconv, symtimes, no prealloc, file-flags, HFS-compression rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU General Public Licence for details. ssh doppler /opt/local/bin/rsync --version rsync version 3.1.2 protocol version 31 Copyright (C) 1996-2015 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others. Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/ Capabilities: 64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints, socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs, xattrs, iconv, symtimes, no prealloc, file-flags, HFS-compression rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU General Public Licence for details. 1. Case with the directory without attributes # coriolis:/tmp/test % rsync -aArvX --rsync-path=/opt/local/bin/rsync dir+noattr doppler:/tmp sending incremental file list dir+noattr/ dir+noattr/index.xml.gz sent 102,608 bytes received 39 bytes 41,058.80 bytes/sec total size is 102,449 speedup is 1.00 2. Case with the directory with attributes # coriolis:/tmp/test % rsync -aArvX --rsync-path=/opt/local/bin/rsync dir+attr doppler:/tmp sending incremental file list dir+attr/ dir+attr/index.xml.gz rsync: mkstemp "/tmp/dir+attr/.index.xml.gz.E5wKN9" failed: Permission denied (13) sent 102,671 bytes received 127 bytes 68,532.00 bytes/sec total size is 102,449 speedup is 1.00 rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1249) [sender=3.1.2]