rsync permission denied even root

[packets]

I'm trying to sync two dir in a two different servers. At first, I'm running not privilege user since the directory has a read access to others. However, I encountered an error:

rsync: readlink "/data/docs/ARCHIVE" failed: Permission denied (13)

The permission of the directory ARCHIVE is:

drwxrwxrw- 2 foo users 4096 Nov 24 01:20 ARCHIVE

I decided to do rsync as root since it has no limitation in permission (am I right?). Now, when I run rsync using root, still I encountered Permission denied. I can't understand why it was denied when it fact it has read-write access. Other directory is fine.

Can anyone advise how to fix this problem? This is the first time I encountered this error using rsync

[scathefire]

what user is the rsync server running as?

[packets]

At first I'm using non-privilege user.

but I tried also direct root access to remove the doubt about permission but still the same.

[scathefire]

is this running as a standalone daemon or through xinetd? is selinux installed? is it on/off?

[packets]

is this running as a standalone daemon or through xinetd?

It is standalone

is selinux installed? is it on/off?

Yes. It is installed. I do turn it off yesterday but still the same problem occur.

Is there a possibility that the file was in use that's why it is permission denied?