> Was there already a /tmp/services directory on the dest? No. And just to make sure, I ran a quick 'rm -rf /tmp/services' on the remote host, then re-ran open

> Was there already a /tmp/services directory on the dest? No. And just to make sure, I ran a quick 'rm -rf /tmp/services' on the remote host, then re-ran openrsync on the client. Same result. This is OpenBSD 7.9 on both sides. And I 100% agree about trailing slashes.