Hello, The problem seems to have been sorted out, and it was after I replaced the offending bash package with a new one. Thanks to all for helping me. I have a question. After GRUB does its job, where does the control go to in the kernel? i.e. where do I start reading the kernel sources (gnumach and hurd), considering the sequence in which the booting process takes place till the shell executes. Thanx, ASR