i just wasted 10 minutes of my time. for the record, setuid root executables don't dump core when you're not root, even when you have write access to the directory. i don't know how that piece of trivia escaped me all these years, but it seems to be true. pete -- Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D