I think "bash interactive shell" is what you want to search for. Have a look at item 6.3.2 at <http://durak.org/sean/pubs/software/bash/bashref_25.html> (picked up arbitrarily from the search results). I *think* scp uses the shell non-interactively, but test to make sure. Either way, you should have that in bashrc in case there are other non-interactive shells in use (and there usually are). Devin