Karsten & Matthew, Thanks, you have cleared up the mysteries for me. Well, almost.....
.... soooo, if Debian is looking for a bashrc or profile file, it won't mind if it has a dot in front or not, right? :> I printed out the BashPrompt-HOWTO and can play with the prompt at the prompt. Joe should colorise, the local university have it running on Free- BSD in glorious yellow text on red, but can find nothing in the docs or config file. Really shouldn't Debian install with an option for color? I'll sort out the colours and come back with next problem. Alles van die beste Ian Ian Balchin ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fables Bookshop, 119 High Street, Grahamstown, 6139, South Africa email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone or Fax +27-(0)46-636-1525 cell: 083-495-7353 sms [EMAIL PROTECTED] Founder Member Southern African Book Dealers Association http;//www.imaginet.co.za/fables All of literature is a space in which a variety of writers, none of them original, blend and crash. Roland Barthes, in `Mythologies', 1957