Hehehe, many thanks for all the input, very much appreciated

I've just started coding a little process that once called will loop through all day check the FTP and then if returns a success kick off the main shell. I'm going to run some intensive testing this afternoon and see if the network admins complain about it or not. If not then I am in business

Many thanks again

Just a thought, could you seen any validity in adding the machine ident, username/password into the .netrc file? That's not going to make a whole heap of difference is it apart from tidy things up a little.