If a program calls a shell script, how can the shell script execute another shell script in the background, in such a way that the second script will keep executing after the first one exits? I tried just appending an ampersand, but it seems like the second script is being killed as soon as the first one exits. I thought maybe exec does this, but the bash man page says that "exec command" causes the command to replace the shell as the current process, rather than to start a new process. I need it to actually fork instead. The context is that I'm trying to get vgetty to convert the .rmd files (some weird sound format) into .wav files as it receives them, but that causes vgetty to block until this conversion process is done, and it can't answer the phone again until it's done. The conversion should be a background process. -- _______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud@bigfoot.com (_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd@kb7pwd.ampr.org __) | | \________________________________________________________________ Free long distance at http://www.bigredwire.com/me/RefTrack?id=USA063420