I have an openbsd development system that is periodically updated and I'm trying
to create a smaller system in order to fit onto a compact flash used on a
soekris box. so I thought a 

rsync --verbose --recursive --times --perms --owner --group --numeric-ids
--links --hard-links --devices --exclude-from ./file_list /
10.0.0.2:/var/tmp/openbsd37_full/

with a good file_list is just the right thing.

the problem is that if the file_list is large enough it will not be parsed
correctly by rsync. some of the files will not be transfered as they should.
if I split the file_list in more pieces and I run rsync for each of them I can
get the job done, but I guess you should know about the bug.

in my application the client was a rsync {2.6.0-2.6.5} running on openbsd 3.7
and the destination (10.0.0.2) was a gentoo linux machine with rsync 2.6.0 (but
I guess this ain't relevant).