thanks .. an oversight on my part.. with the mx=0 now changed to :mx#0: however the problem still exists... everything works fine if I do not try to remove the spool file with the print command ... ie currently print command = lp -d%p %s this works great but spool file stays ... I have tried the following : lpr -b -P%p %s <-standard lpr complains about file too large..even when logged in as root and printing from command line.(expected) lp -c -d%p %s;rm %s <-spools fine but is removed before the whole job is printed (only get the first few pages) lp -d%p %s <- works great but spool file is not removed. thanks for your input... any other clues would be greatly appreciated... thanks in advance Robert