I'm getting a confusing error from rsync and the initial things I'm finding from web searches (as well as all the usual chmod'ing) are not solving it:
rsync: failed to set times on "/foo/bar": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23)
at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-35.2/rsync/main.c(992) [sender=2.6.9]
It seems to be working despite that error, but it would be nice to get rid of that.
I've seen that problem when I'm writing to a filesystem which doesn't (properly) handle times -- I think SMB shares or FAT or something.
What is your target filesystem?
If /foo/bar is on NFS (or possibly some FUSE filesystem), that might be the problem.
Either way, adding -O (--omit-dir-times) to your command line will avoid it trying to set modification times on directories.
It could be that you don't have privileges to some of the files. From an administrator account, try "sudo rsync -av " Alternately, enable the root account and sign in as root. That should allow you to completely hose your system and brute force your rsync! ;-) I'm not sure if the above mentioned --extended-attributes will help, but I threw it in too, just for good measure.