Thanks for the reply.

Yeah sorry that is what I mean, I'm not very good at scripting yet so get my terminology a bit mixed up.

Could you possibly explain what you mean be: "fd 2 of the batch run is messed up. Interactively, it is the tty."

---------- Post updated 08-03-11 at 12:50 PM ---------- Previous update was 08-02-11 at 11:56 PM ----------

Hi again,

One of the lovely people from work who is actually good at their job has explained your answer and that does indeed seem the most likely explanation as the file that calls this script behaves slightly oddly and doesn't have any paths set up (I think because it is one of the first things run when the system starts up).

Thanks for the help, do you know if there is a way to specify for a who file where the stderr output should be directed to in case anyone in future forgets to redirect it? If not I will just update the comment at the top of the script to inform them of the need to do so.