rsync errors

[Robert Holtzman]

Running Ubuntu 10.04.1 and rsync 3.0.7-1. Used rsync successfully for
over a year for backups. Recently there was a kernel upgrade to 
2.6.32-25. Don't know if that has any bearing. When I tried to run a 
backup today rsync failed with the error message:

sending incremental file list
rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4 bytes to socket [sender]: 
Broken pipe (32)
rsync: mkdir "/media/disk/10.04laptop" failed: No such file or directory 
(2)
rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at main.c(595) [Receiver=3.0.7]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (9 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(601) 
[sender=3.0.7]

/var/log/syslog just showed the above message. Searched on the message 
and got one hit that said it was because a FAT32 partition had a size 
limit. I doubt that I've come close to that.

Couldn't find anything in this list's archives that matched the error 
message. Did I miss something?

The command that has been working until now is:

sudo rsync -vaHz --exclude '/proc' --exclude '/sys' --exclude '*.iso' 
--exclude '/home/holtzm/Documents/*.iso' --exclude '/media' /. 
/media/disk/10.04laptop

I'm at a loss as to how to proceed. any pointers appreciated.

-- 
Bob Holtzman
Key ID: 8D549279
"If you think you're getting free lunch,
  check the price of the beer"