--delete doesn't work when transferring many files

[William R. Dickson]

This is a curious thing.  I'm syncing two directories, containing some
250 subdirectories totalling around 11,000 files.  This:

rsync --password-file=/usr/local/etc/rsync/.passwd --delete -rtv
--exclude-from=/usr/local/etc/rsync/excludes /usr/local/sourcedir
username at destserver.com::modulename

...works fine if both directories are already nearly in sync.  Deleting a
few files from the source causes matching deletions on the destination.
But recently I made major changes to the source directory, which should
have resulted in nearly everything being deleted from the destination
server.  However, it doesn't -- it simply starts uploading files.

If I change "-rtv" to "-rtvn", rsync correctly reports a whole slew of
planned deletions -- but as soon as I try to run it for real, it simply
fails to do the actual deleting.

If it helps at all, the source system is a NetBSD/MacPPC machine, and the
destination is a FreeBSD/i386 machine.

Any ideas?  I searched the list archives and google, but was unable to
find any similar issues.

Thanks,

-Bill

--
 William R. Dickson -- Consuming the Earth's limited resources since 1968
 wrd at awenet.com                            http://www.seavoy-dickson.org/

          But I'm the luckiest guy on the lower east side
          'Cuz I've got wheels, and you wanna go for a ride

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