rsync dies with "inflate returned -3 (0 bytes)"

[Konstantin Boyandin]

On Ubuntu 16.04, when rsyncing big KVM VM image (17,055,219,712 bytes), sync error happens each time I try to use command

rsync -vaz -e ssh host:/path/to/file ./

The full text printed:

    inflate returned -3 (0 bytes)
    rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at token.c(557) [receiver=3.1.1]
    rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (72 bytes received so far) [generator]
    rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(226) [generator=3.1.1]

On receiving side: Ubuntu 16.04.3 64bit, rsync 3.1.1-3ubuntu1.2
On remote side: Ubuntu 14.04.5 64bit, rsync 3.1.0-2ubuntu0.2

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Can be avoided not using -z

AFAIK it is an issue with compression on very huge files.
Theree are similar discussions on e.g. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741628

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

That bug report also has a comment saying that with --block-size=65536 it worked, but that was for an error code of -5, not -3.

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

The other hint in the debian bug is that with rsync 3.1.1 (upgraded from 3.1.0) it works. In this bug, 3.1.1 was at the receiving side, and 3.1.0 is the sender.

One of the changes in 3.1.1 is a new compression stryle, triggered by -zz. A test to see if this gets rid of the problem, since the server side is 3.1.1, is to use that option from the trusty (14.04) side. Example:
$ rsync -avHP -zz .bashrc xenial-rsync.lxd:/tmp
sending incremental file list
.bashrc
          3,828 100% 0.00kB/s 0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)

sent 1,861 bytes received 35 bytes 3,792.00 bytes/sec
total size is 3,828 speedup is 2.02

Here the machine running the above rsync command is trusty, with rsync 3.1.0. It doesn't understand -zz, but passes it along to the server, which is xenial and is running 3.1.1.

Could people affected by this bug see if that -zz option (instead of just -z) helps?