>rsync already defaults to ssh as transport but with >$ rsync -e 'ssh -i keyfile' >you can use rsync with a ssh key. Yes, that was what I had been doing, but I wanted to avoid the use of ssh completely, the connection is secured over a vpn, silly to incur the overhead of encryption, twice. An rsync daemon was used and the passwords automated with a password file and this has been working well for a few days...