"Invalid file index" failures, suspicious index numbers

[Wayne Davison]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 01:01:33PM +0200, Mailing list subscriptions wrote:
> sudo rsync -e "ssh -i full_path_to_key_file" -avzx \
>            --numeric-ids --delete --progress \
>            root at example.com:/ /var/root/backups/example.com/
> 
> On the remote host, rsync logs in with root privileges and a forced  
> command appears in the authorized keys file; logging shows that this  
> is the actual command being sent to the server:
> 
> rsync --server --sender -vlogDtprxz --numeric-ids . /

If the remote rsync doesn't get the same options that the local rsync
sent, the protocol can easily get out of whack, since it's fragile in
that way:  both sides must know what's happening for each byte in the
protocol to be interpreted correctly.

When using a forced ssh command, you should take a look at the script
rrsync in the support directory (which can be used to limit the rsync
command that is run without corrupting the options) and also check into
using a single-instance daemon setup (because the demon protocol sends
the options over the socket, and you use the daemon config file to limit
what options are accepted).  This was very recently discussed in this
bug:

https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4163

..wayne..