Rsync system backup to disk image

Hi,
I had quite 'small' HD ~60Gb and I backed up on ~1.5 Tb NAS with ext3 file system via DiskUtility - it was creating an exact copy of my hard drive in a .dmg file (and I can mont them, etc).
Now I have ~250 Gb HD, and some free space, but also a lot of data (=regular files like images, text, etc. that can be usefull even on PC). So I want to
1) backup only OS X system+applications to some bootable disk image - so that I could restore function in case my drive fail and get back all my programs and settings.
2) copy user data (some selected folders) to NAS and make them available on the local network.
So I tried TimeMachine, but it fails to create sparcebundle on the NAS and it fails to recognize one if I create it locally and copy to NAS (there are tips on how to make TM recognize network storage).
So I create sparceimage, 60Gb(enough for OS X+applications) on NAS and I can mount it fine over network on my MacBook. Then I try rsync (versions from OS X, RsyncX and Macports) but all fail with variouse error messages after copying fe Gb of data. Also they render sparceimage unreadable (no mountable file system). Example of errors:
rsync error: protocol incompatibility (code 2) at sender.c(562)
or
recv_generator: mkdir "/Volumes/blablabla" failed: Input/output error
or
rsync: rename "/Volumes/blabla" -> "blabla": Input/output error (5)
The commands I used
sudo /usr/bin/rsync --exclude-from /Users/me/user_data.txt -av --hard-links /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ /Volumes/Backup2012/
or (RsyncX)
sudo /usr/local/bin/rsync --exclude-from /Users/me/user_data.txt -av --hard-links /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ /Volumes/Backup2012/
or
sudo /opt/local/bin/rsync --exclude-from /Users/me/user_data.txt -av --crtimes --hard-links --acls --xattrs --fileflags  /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ /Volumes/Backup2012/
Backup2012 has 1 HFS+Journaled single GUID partition in sparceimage format, with 60 Gb limit. I guess I am missing somethig. Any ideas?

Why aren't you using  -E option to preserve extended-attributes ?
It is a good point. I have got 3 flavors of rsync (macports, RsynX and apple) and I was using --xattrs attribute, but I guess I dropped it somewhere.
Are you sure it's --exclude-from /Users/... and not --exclude-from="/Users/..." ?
Same thing here - it seems to work for some rsync, but I will check.
Have you set permissions on the mounted backup ?
Yes. Still thank you for reminding.
I thought about target mode, but it seems to be not the issue. Also I would not like to reboot for a backup. And I do not have to have 50Gb free on HD to make backup and then copy it - it is ridiculous.
Now I have Taurus LAN - truncated Linux box for 60€ which I can SSH to and do whatever to the Linux inside, but it will essentially drop all modifications on reboot unless I build my own installation and keep it on USB stick. It has no Mac compartibiliyty or backup, and I want bootable disc image to restore OS X from. Data (images, texts, etc) I can just copy there as is. So I just keep .dmg there and mount  1st Taurus LAN over smb (it shows itself on local network), then I mount .dmg and use it as if it was locally. I figured out I can create dmg over night, but now I just will do it on FireWire HD and copy - then I willtest rsync on .dmg and see if it performs better than on sparceimage.
CCC and 50 other alternatives http://www.lbackup.org/alternatives - yes, but I want some simple Unix way, or OS X way, so that I am not dependent on some stupid application beeing discontinued or something.

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