Rsync error 'unexpected tag 93' when --log-file= parameter is present and run from crontab

[Ernst J. Oud]

L.S.

I hope someone can enlighten me on the following phenomenon.

When I run rsync (3.0.2 or 3.0.4) from a (SH) script as follows:

rsync -vrpth --stats --progress --log-file=/nslu2/rsync.log --log-file-format="%t %i %n%L" --include-from=/nslu2/rsync-files /share/hdd/data/public/Ernst/ 192.168.1.69::rsync-nslu2

All is well; it works fine. Log file is created, both client (NSLU2 from LinkSys) and server (here 192.168.1.69, a small embedded linux box) do not report any errors. Copy is performed flawlessly.

However, if I include the same line in crontab, when executed the server reports an unexpected tag 93 and protocol errors in io.c at line 1169, which is the default handler for communication errors. This *only* happens when the --log-file=/nslu2/rsync.log line is present. If I change the line in crontab from the above to:

rsync -vrpth --stats --progress --include-from=/nslu2/rsync-files /share/hdd/data/public/Ernst/ 192.168.1.69::rsync-nslu2 > /nslu2/rsync.log

(i.e. omit the --log-file= parameter and generate a log by redirection)

all is well again. The moment I add the --log-file= parameter, the error pops up again. 

The weird thing is that a search with Google for 'unexpected tag' generates a lot of links but no links whatsoever for 'unexpected tag 93', so I must be the first to report this kind of protocol error.

I tried --blocking-io and --no-blocking-io but that didn't help. I recompiled the server rsync package and tried both 3.0.2 and 3.0.4 to no avail. At the client side I used both 3.0.4 and 3.0.5. It is hard to tell which side generates the error though. The error message appears in /var/log/messages at the server's end. The client's syslog does not report an error, it only reports that cron has started rsync.

I tried calling rsync (with the --log-file parameter present) from a script within crontab instead of calling it directly; same result: it only works when I remove the --log-file= parameter.

I can live with the latter option since it also generates a log file by redirection of rsync's output but I prefer the --log-file= version since that allows me to change the log format.

Any clues?

Thanks in advance!

Ernst

BTW; how can an error such as this be 'unexpected'? The tag '93' must mean something? Why can't the error handler be more specific about what caused this? At least some information in a client-server environment on which side generated the protocol error would help enormously!
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