Exit 12 error

[David Tonhofer]

reader at newsguy.com wrote:
> rsync  version 2.6.9cvs  protocol version 29
> Running rsync from an rsnapshot script I get the following error:
>
>   unknown message 4:1 [generator]
>   rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(307) [generator=2.6.9cvs]
>   rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (1718 bytes received so far) [sender]
>   rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(453) [sender=2.6.9cvs]
>
> Rsync was called with these flags
>    -vva  --delete  --numeric-ids  --links  \
>    --delete-excluded --stats   /etc/    /bk/etc/
>
> Exit 12 information in `man rsync' isn't very helpfull.  At least to a
> layman.
>
> Can Anyone shed some light on this? 
>
>   
Check out the rsync issues page at http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/issues.html
to gather more information. Maybe something is adding text to the stream 
(e.g. some
script executed at login).