parallel --transfer rsync bug

[Neil Harris]

Taking a working commandline to test remote execution does not work:

echo This is input_file > input_file && parallel --trc {}.out -S analyze09 cat {} ">"{}.out ::: input_file

(originally from: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38053503/replacement-string-not-working-in-gnu-parallel)

Output:

parallel: This should not happen. You have found a bug.
Please contact <parallel@gnu.org> and follow
https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#REPORTING-BUGS

Include this in the report:
* The version number: 20200322
* The bugid: Cannot figure out version of rsync: rsync  version v3.2.3  protocol version 31
 Copyright (C) 1996-2020 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
 Web site: https://rsync.samba.org/
 Capabilities:
     64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
     socketpairs, hardlinks, hardlink-specials, symlinks, IPv6, atimes,
     batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs, xattrs, optional protect-args, iconv,
     symtimes, prealloc, stop-at, no crtimes
 Optimizations:
     SIMD, asm, openssl-crypto
 Checksum list:
     xxh128 xxh3 xxh64 (xxhash) md5 md4 none
 Compress list:
     zstd lz4 zlibx zlib none

 rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you
 are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  See the GNU

 General Public Licence for details. 

localhost:

parallel -V

parallel 20200322
Copyright (C) 2007-2020 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk and Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
parallel comes with no warranty.

localhost uname -a

Linux analyze05 5.4.66-1-lts #1 SMP Thu, 17 Sep 2020 18:00:06 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

remotehost uname -a

Linux analyze09 5.4.65-1-lts #1 SMP Sun, 13 Sep 2020 21:56:58 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

rsync -V (on localhost ) 

rsync  version v3.2.3  protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2020 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: https://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
    64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
    socketpairs, hardlinks, hardlink-specials, symlinks, IPv6, atimes,
    batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs, xattrs, optional protect-args, iconv,
    symtimes, prealloc, stop-at, no crtimes
Optimizations:
    SIMD, asm, openssl-crypto
Checksum list:
    xxh128 xxh3 xxh64 (xxhash) md5 md4 none
Compress list:
    zstd lz4 zlibx zlib none

rsync -V (on remotehost) 

rsync  version v3.2.3  protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2020 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: https://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
    64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
    socketpairs, hardlinks, hardlink-specials, symlinks, IPv6, atimes,
    batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs, xattrs, optional protect-args, iconv,
    symtimes, prealloc, stop-at, no crtimes
Optimizations:
    SIMD, asm, openssl-crypto
Checksum list:
    xxh128 xxh3 xxh64 (xxhash) md5 md4 none
Compress list:
    zstd lz4 zlibx zlib none

Second example:

parallel -S analyze09 --transfer  cat ::: testfile.txt

Output:

(same error as above)

Third example with just localhost:

parallel -S : cat ::: testfile.txt

Output: (is correctly:)

test file
test file again

thanks for any input,

Neil Harris