rsync failures - possible ulimit issues?

Hi all,

I'm a hobbyist that happens to own an interesting VAXstation 4000/60.  I've 
had OpenBSD running on it for some time, updated to 4.5 now.

Recently I've been setting up rsync to make backups of each of my hobby 
machines.  All of my other machines have gone off without a hitch but I keep 
getting errors on the VAX:

[sender] make_file(usr/obj/games/fortune/datfiles/limerick.dat,*,2)
[sender] make_file(usr/obj/games/fortune/fortune/.depend,*,2)
ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [sender]
rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util.c(117) 
[sender=3.0.5]
_exit_cleanup(code=22, file=util.c, line=117): about to call exit(22)

This is on -vvv.  The failure occurs near this point (but not always at this 
exact point) consistently.

My initial instinct after ruling out that the system is not exhausting RAM 
(it has 104 MB, maximum for the machine, and is not running X nor doing much 
so there is quite a lot of free RAM) was that it was a data space problem so 
I checked ulimit:

# ulimit -a
time(cpu-seconds)    unlimited
file(blocks)         unlimited
coredump(blocks)     unlimited
data(kbytes)         32768
stack(kbytes)        8192
lockedmem(kbytes)    32718
memory(kbytes)       97852
nofiles(descriptors) 128
processes            158

Changing the limit from 32 MB does not work.  Editing /etc/login.conf to 
permit a login group with unlimited credentials results in the same 32 MB 
limit.

So, I suppose I have two questions:

1.  Is this likely my problem, as I surmise?
2.  If it is, is there some way this limit can be increased on the VAX?  Am 
I missing something, or does it require a change to the code?

In case it matters, here is my rsync batch file:

# cat backup.sh
rsync -vvv -a -e ssh --progress --delete --exclude /usr/src --exclude 
/dev --exclude /public / 
adelaide.photojim.prv:/home/jim/backup/maroochydore/

(/usr/src and /public are excluded because they are NFS mounts so I back 
them up by backing up my NFS server.)

I know this is an ancient machine, but this problem is irritating me.  :)

I have to warn you that I'm not a coder, just a serious hobbyist.

Thanks much,

Jim