Mumia, At Sun, 08 Oct 2006 13:24:21 -0500 you said, What are you trying to do? Just for interest, I want to understand how startx, via several stages of indirection, starts xfce. I appreciate the various suggestions but none have been completely consistent with the system here. To be convinced, I want to make the pertinent scripts report to a log. I need to know which log to use and how to make a script write to it. Thanks, ... Peter E.