i have a backup script which runs on a central "server" and uses rsync to pull data across the lan from target hosts.  all machines are running osx 10.5.2 (intel), and the same version of rsync (3.0.1, from macports).  the script has been working fine generally for quite some time.  however, recently as part of a project, i created a named pipe in a backup target dir on my laptop.  when i made my weekly sanity check of the backup script's log, i discovered the following error:

rsync: get_xattr_names: llistxattr("tmp/sf_daemon/fifo",1024) failed: Operation not permitted (1)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(1497) [generator=3.0.1]

in some cases (where very large numbers of files in the same target hierarchy were involved), this error also appears to have prevented the copying of some other, unrelated files which i would have expected to have been backed up.  i have evidence of this, but haven't tried to reproduce that specific effect.

although i found this somewhat disturbing, i've come to expect some xattr flakiness using rsync on osx, so, since i don't need the fifo to be backed up anyway, i thought in the interests of time that i would just use --no-D to exclude any such files from the backup, and thus work around the error.

however, that didn't seem to work either ... so here we are.  if you want, i can send you the whole script, etc., but that may be overkill (let me know).  in the meanwhile, this is the offending command (copied from the log file):

   executing /opt/local/bin/rsync
   			-a
   			--no-D
   			--delete
   			--no-whole-file
   			--out-format=%o %12b %n
   			-X
   			-8
   			-e
   			ssh
   			--rsync-path=/opt/local/bin/rsync
   			--exclude=.*
   			crow://Users/jpf/tmp
   			/Volumes/truth/backup/daily/crow/CLASS.5/Users/jpf

i haven't tried backing up the fifo with -X turned off because i care less about backing up a fifo than i do about picking up the osx-specific metadata that still lurks in some files' resource forks ... 

here's the output of rsync --version:

spock(root):/var/log/backup# rsync --version
rsync  version 3.0.1  protocol version 30
Copyright (C) 1996-2008 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
    64-bit files, 32-bit inums, 32-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
    socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace,
    append, ACLs, xattrs, iconv, symtimes

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.


if you want more details, or the whole script package, please let me know at the reporter address.

thanks,
-jf