Working on 3.1.1 correctly 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, no xattrs, iconv, symtimes, prealloc 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. How to reproduce: cd /tmp mkdir -p a/a a/b a/c rsync -axR /tmp/a /tmp/b # This works fine rsync --no-inc-recursive -avxR a /tmp/b /tmp/c # This works fine at this moment mkdir a/a/a mkdir a/a/b rsync --no-inc-recursive -avxR a /tmp/b /tmp/c # Same command fails after creating new directories building file list ... done ABORTING due to invalid path from sender: a/b rsync error: protocol incompatibility (code 2) at generator.c(1270) [generator=3.1.2]