Thank you for the responses to my plea for help. I have used Galen's method of obtaining the xml. I changed the line running the hobbitdxboard command to allow the host part to work on my system. $BBHOME/bin/bb 127.0.0.1 "hobbitdxboard host=$HOST_S" I'll also be taking a look at s_aiello's script. So thanks for that. Regards, Andrew