rsync 3.0.6 on OS X Server: repeatable I/O error messages for /home

So, Apple managed to break their properly-working rsync with a software update several months ago. The net result is that files that aren’t present on the source aren’t being deleted from the destination. This is a real problem for me, since I’m backing up an entire XServe.

I compiled rsync 3.0.6 according to this site: http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html, and hoped that would solve the problem. However, every time I rsync I get the same readdir i/o error message about /home (an empty dir) and then rsync decides it doesn’t want to delete files on the destination.

The source is a software-mirrored 1TB volume and the dest is a single 1TB drive. You shouldn’t see I/O errors on the software mirror, all the drives test as good using every diagnostic tool I can find and I’ve done the repair-permissions voodoo repeatedly.

rsync: readdir("/home"): Input/output error (5)
IO error encountered -- skipping file deletion

The return code from rsync (23) is fairly useless, “partial transfer due to error.”

I believe there’s no actual hardware error and something software-related, most likely not in rsync, is causing this problem. Does anyone have any experience with this? I can get it to continue with the file deletion by using –ignore-errors, but that is, IMHO, a pretty nasty kludge.