Sometimes when using `su` to run a script that runs `rsync` you will get an error like this: rsync: pop_dir "/home/svn" failed: Permission denied (13) rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3) at flist.c(1222) In my case I was starting a script as root and the script was using `su` to change the user to "svn". su svn -c "/home/svn/RSYNC_SVN.sh" The fix was simply to tell `su`