oh wise men have an executable bash script. can execute it using terminal window - no issues. when i copy the script from the bin dir to desktop, the execute it from there by double clicking on the file name (with a made up icon), it displays buttons: a) run in terminal b) run c) display d) cancel using either a) or b) above, the program terminates just after a few bytes of output. tried it several times. even tried it when an empty terminal was on the screen. any ideas? david -- David López Software Engineer