Hi Tim, >Beats me why so many systems have begun requiring that </dev/null. To disconnect stdin. Your 'myapp' program can do that programmatically, and most well-behaved daemon applications do just that. But if you are running some application that you are unsure whether or not it disconnects itself from the stdin, stdout, and stderr, then you can tell the shell to do it for you. Sincerely, --Eljay