I finally got round to setting up another user account (other than root) on my scratch built system. Most things are working except for Gnome-terminal. It starts fine for root but crashes with a message about changes to the 2.2.x kernel and checking ptys. Given that it works fine for root I think this is a red-herring. I think this is a file permissions problem. I've scanned round the web and found a couple of hits that suggested some file permissions that need to be set. I've checked these and they are ok. Any suggestions for how I might go about tracking this down (and yes I know I could cure this by installing a 'proper' distro, but what will I learn from that? - don't answer that, it's rhetorical :o) ) ____________ BAROMETER, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary ____________ Hey, I found out how to get rid of all the crap our e-mail system added to the end of the message! :oD