bad error message? .. main.c code 23 .. caused by sgid on dir

[James G. Sack (jim)]

This is to suggest a possible improvement in an error message.

On a recent rsync transfer I see a message like

> rsync: failed to set permissions on ".../somedir": Permission denied (13)
for several dirs that have the sgid bit set

There seems to be a retry pass, because all the messages are repeated.
And then there is (perhaps a summary) line
 > rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at
main.c(977) [sender=2.6.9]

I used a "-Cavz" option string, so it's understandable that it would
try. The destination user is non-root and the group-owner is not in the
destination system anyway (nor is its gid), so it's understandable there
would be failures.

Perhaps I will try replacing the "-a" with "-rlptoD" (no -g), but I am
not really concerned with solving my problem so much as suggesting that
the summary error message
   "..some files could not be transferred.."
is misleading and might be improved: the dirs in question were
transferred just fine, including files (and subdirs). Perhaps there
needs to be separate counters on errors on transfer, delete, and
perm-setting? And the error message could then be made more specific.

I am not a subscriber, so kindly cc me on replies, if that is
convenient. (Thanks)

Regards,
..jim (and thanks forever for rsync!)