Everything working as expected, so shouldn't ERROR be WARNING

[Paul Slootman]

On Thu 18 Jan 2024, Roger Price via rsync wrote:

> I am backing up a user's directories from local machine titan to remote
> machine maria. On the remote machine maria file /etc/rsyncd.conf contains
> 
>  [rprice-home]
>  ...
>  exclude = *.dvi
> 
> I start the backup by using this command on the local machine titan:
> 
>  rprice at titan ~ rsync -av --dry-run /mnt/home/rprice rsync://rprice@maria/rprice-home
> 
> I get the messages
> 
>  sending incremental file list
>  ERROR: daemon refused to receive file "rprice/demo.dvi"
>  ...
> 
> I understand that the remote daemon has refused file demo.dvi because I
> specifically requested that dvi files not be transferred.  I choose that
> myself in a regular configuration file.  So shouldn't it be a WARNING rather
> than an ERROR?  I would expect to see

In this case you're in control of both ends of the transfer, so you know
that *.dvi files won't be transferred.

However, it could be that this rsync command is being run by someone who
expects rsync to do what they asked it to do, i.e. transfer the entire
contents of .../rprice to the remote server, and the client rsync can't
fulfil that request; hence the error.

If you don't want *.dvi files to be transferred, then you should add
    --exclude '*.dvi'
to the invocation.


Paul