On 5/7/2015 2:21 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote: > John R Pierce wrote: > >> >On 5/7/2015 4:56 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote: >>> >>The worst thing about BackupPC is the insane error message >>> >>"Unable to read 4 bytes", which comes up if anything is wrong. >>> >>Possibly the worst error message anywhere? >> > >> >thats an rsync protocol message, and yeah, debugging >> >connection/authentication issues is a bit ugly. > I'm sure you are right. > But I use rsync several times a day, and I have never received this message. > > It's not ugly, it is inexcusable. I just tried a command line rsync to a host that wasn't listening to ssh at all, and got.. ssh: connect to host castillc2-PC port 22: Connection timed out rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync error: unexplained error (code 255) at io.c(600) [receiver=3.0.6] not exactly the pinnacle of clarity. -- john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz