trying a simple rsync between two boxes as suggested in the man pages fails. For example: rsync -av ./test cedar@localhost:/tmp/ Failed to exec rsh : No such file or directory rsync error: error in IPC code (code 14) at pipe.c(82) rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes read so far) rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(165) Even if you emerge net-misc/netkit-rsh you are still left with setting up rsh. To get rsync to work you must specify ssh rather than rsh like this: rsync -av --rsh=ssh ./test cedar@localhost:/tmp/ cedar@localhost's password: building file list ... done wrote 152 bytes read 20 bytes 22.93 bytes/sec total size is 7 speedup is 0.04 In my opinion gentoo should default to using ssh over rsh since it is more secure and more common. My friend tells me that debian defaults to ssh in this case. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.rsync -av ./test cedar@localhost:/tmp/ 2.bad 3.rsync -av --rsh=ssh ./test cedar@localhost:/tmp/ 4. good emerge info Portage 2.0.49-r3 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1, 2.4.20-gentoo-r6) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r6 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2000+ ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="sandbox ccache autoaddcvs" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 oss apm avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg libg++ mad mikmod mmx mpeg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib alsa gdbm berkdb slang readline arts svga tcltk java mysql X sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl perl python imlib oggvorbis qt kde motif opengl apache2 imap maildir samba sasl v4l -gnome -gtk"
not sure we want to alter the default behaviour, what do you think, Mike?
ssh is more common than rsh nowadays ... rsh sucks too ;) besides if it's good enough for deb it's good enough for me
2.5.6-r4 now passes --with-rsh=ssh to econf
