[rdiff-backup-users] SSH time out, how to remedy?

[Pieter Donche]

I have a backup machine (FreeBSD7.2) and a target machine 
(FreeBSD 7.2) to be backupped. For several months I made rdiff-backups, 
where the backup-machine initiates a rdiff-backup that connects to 
the target machine and there starts rdiff-backup in server mode 
(as described in 'Unattended rdiff-backup HOWTO' at
 http://arctic.org/~dean/rdiff-backup/unattended.html)
Both machines where in the same building (in different subnets).

My nightly cron script initiates rdiff-backups for file systems 
/home, /usr and /var, and a number of directories of / of the target
machine.

The backup-server yesterday moved to a different building at 5 kilometers
from here.

The rdiff-backups of /home, /usr and /var now have error, not the 
rdiff-backups of the (much smaller) subdirs of / 
In the mail sent by cron last night, I have:
---------
Read from remote host macos.cmi.ua.ac.be: Operation timed out
Fatal Error: Lost connection to the remote system
ssh: connect to host macos.cmi.ua.ac.be port 22: Operation timed out
Fatal Error: Truncated header string (problem probably originated remotely)

Couldn't start up the remote connection by executing
    ssh -C macos-backup rdiff-backup --server
------

If I initiate a rdiff-backup at the command line from my backup server:

address@hidden ~]$ /usr/local/bin/rdiff-backup macos-backup::/var 
/home/backup/ma
cos/var
Previous backup seems to have failed, regressing destination now.
Read from remote host macos.cmi.ua.ac.be: Connection reset by peer
Fatal Error: Lost connection to the remote system

Seems the SSH connection gets lost..

How can one remedy to this (rdiff-backup paramters, ssh parameters ???)