diff --git a/src/middlewared/middlewared/plugins/rsync.py b/src/middlewared/middlewared/plugins/rsync.py
index eba8fecdb1ae..3f36fb141df8 100644
--- a/src/middlewared/middlewared/plugins/rsync.py
+++ b/src/middlewared/middlewared/plugins/rsync.py
@@ -299,7 +299,13 @@ class Config:
 
     @private
     async def rsync_task_extend(self, data, context):
-        data['extra'] = shlex.split(data['extra'].replace('"', r'"\"').replace("'", r'"\"'))
+        try:
+            data['extra'] = shlex.split(data['extra'].replace('"', r'"\"').replace("'", r'"\"'))
+        except ValueError:
+            # This is to handle the case where the extra value is misconfigured for old cases
+            # Moving on, we are going to verify that it can be split successfully using shlex
+            data['extra'] = data['extra'].split()
+
         for field in ('mode', 'direction'):
             data[field] = data[field].upper()
         Cron.convert_db_format_to_schedule(data)
@@ -351,10 +357,11 @@ async def validate_rsync_task(self, data, schema):
         if not remote_host:
             verrors.add(f'{schema}.remotehost', 'Please specify a remote host')
 
-        if data.get('extra'):
-            data['extra'] = ' '.join(data['extra'])
-        else:
-            data['extra'] = ''
+        data['extra'] = ' '.join(data['extra'])
+        try:
+            shlex.split(data['extra'].replace('"', r'"\"').replace("'", r'"\"'))
+        except ValueError as e:
+            verrors.add(f'{schema}.extra', f'Please specify valid value: {e}')
 
         mode = data.get('mode')
         if not mode: