I am an old 'friend' of getpass(3). While we were bringing up 4.0 a few years ago we inadvertantly "rm'ed" /dev/tty (a mknod type special file). You should have seen the garbage the 'passwd' command put in /etc/passwd. Try it some time for a lark. Joseph L. Wood, III ABI Holmdel (201) 834-3759 ariel!jlw