In the following sequence of commands, you can see directory /7.2.1511/ will change of ownership to another user and the execute bit is removed. This user, lbfay, is actually my own user but I am not logged on the server while running rsync with root. [root at ctsrepocos ~]# who root tty1 2016-07-22 10:40 [root at ctsrepocos ~]# ls -l /share/CentOS/ total 476 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 apache apache 9 Dec 15 2015 7 -> 7.2.1511/ *drwxr-xr-x*. 13 *apache apache *4096 May 18 12:48 7.2.1511 [root at ctsrepocos ~]# /usr/bin/rsync -a -vvv --delete --delete-excluded --exclude "local" --exclude "isos" --exclude "*.iso" --exclude "xen4" --exclude "*.i686.*" --exclude "i386" --exclude "atomic" rsync:// centos.mirror.iweb.ca/centos/7.2.1511 /share/CentOS [root at ctsrepocos ~]# ls -l /share/CentOS/ total 476 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 apache apache 9 Dec 15 2015 7 -> 7.2.1511/ *drw-r--r--. *13 *lbfay lbfay *4096 May 18 12:48 7.2.1511 Someone has an idea of what is going on? Thanks,