I had this problem, but only when I tried to rsync from a Linux (RH) server to a Solaris server. My fix was to make sure rsync had the same path on both boxes, and that the ownership of rsync was the same.
On the linux box, rsync path was /usr/bin, on Solaris box it was /usr/local/bin. So, on the Solaris box I did ln -s /usr/local/bin/rsync /usr/bin/rsync.
I still had the same problem, and noticed ownership differences. On linux it was root:root, on solaris it was bin:bin. Changing solaris to root:root fixed it.