One answer would be to put contrl-g in the /etc/issue file but i didn't figure out how to do it. the other is as follows: echo -e \\a >>/etc/issue sounds the alert (bell) at login. My computer already boots at the boot prompt--or actually, close enough to it for me to manage, but the computer i'm working on doesn't, so I'm going to try to find a way to put something like this in lilo.conf too. But appending won't work in that case. -- Cheryl