[tex-live] Trying to maintain updated TL installation on Cygwin

[Karl Berry]

    rsync: recv_generator: mkdir "/tmp/texlive/2008/archive/...." failed: No
    such file or directory (2)

Your rsync has nothing to do with TL, per se.  I cannot say why it has
started to give that error message on your machine.  Try rsync -vvv.
Try searching around on the net for the error messages.  Nothing, to my
knowledge, has changed on the server end.

We put the files on tug.  You can ftp directly there and see them.
CTAN mirrors them from there, starting with ftp.tex.ac.uk.  You can ftp
directly to CTAN and see them.
You can get them by rsync.
You can get them by ftp.
You can get them by http://mirror.ctan.org.
You can get them however you want, it doesn't matter.

    The question is: since it seems that recently there were problems
    (bin-texlive not updated etc.), are we sure that what rsync downloads is
    all we need?

That question makes no sense to me at all.  Sorry.  The retrieval method
is irrelevant to the content of the packages.  Since you're unsure
whether your rsync is getting all the packages then I suggest logging in
to whatever server by ftp, and do an ls on the server, then do an ls in
your local dir, and compare them.  Pretty basic ...

Hope this helps,
karl