rsync and cygwin on 2003 Server

I encountered the following error when trying to use rsync to copy data from a Linux server to a Windows 2003 Server running Cygwin:

rsync: Failed to exec ssh: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: error in IPC code (code 14) at /home/lapo/packaging/tmp/rsync-2.6.9
/pipe.c(86) [receiver=2.6.9]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /home/lapo/packagi
ng/tmp/rsync-2.6.9/io.c(453) [receiver=2.6.9]

I did a bit of research into running 2003 server and rsync and getting this error. At first I thought it was a security issues, as 2003 server does start off locked down in a way that 2000 server just didn't do.

The search for a security or firewall related cause of the problem was fruitless. I stumbled across a few posts where people were using the Windows command prompt and got rid of the error when they set the appropriate environment variable to point to the SSH binary.

Sure enough, I tried typing ssh at the Cygwin prompt, and it wasn't in the path.

I'd made the newbie mistake of forgetting to install Openssh.

I installed open ssh and the copy command started working just fine.