change drush rsync for use with aegir
I put this in my drushrc.php file to change the default rsync mode to -rlptz for all sites:

$command_specific['rsync'] = array('mode' =&gt; 'rlptz');


You could also put it in each site alias if you did not want the change to be affected on a global basis:

$aliases['mysite'] = array(
  'root' =&gt; '/path/to/drupal',
  'uri' =&gt; 'mysite.org',
  'command-specific' =&gt; array(
    'rsync' =&gt; array(
      'mode' =&gt; 'rlptvz',
    ),
    'sql-sync' =&gt; array(
      'mode' =&gt; 'rlptvz',
    ),
  ),
);