This also reproduces if I just ssh to the slave directly; I just did:
ssh slave01.ci.centos.org ... mkdir -p rsync-test cd rsync-test mkdir foo ln -s blah foo rsync --stats -av ./ sig-atomic@artifacts.ci.centos.org::sig-atomic/fahc/rsync-test/
And I notice rsync says: Number of files: 4 (dir: 3, link: 1)
But what resulted: https://ci.centos.org/artifacts/sig-atomic/fahc/rsync-test/rsync-test/foo
So this must be something related to the server right?