hi, 2 small things 1) you seem to be adding this exec patch to other places where external execution of code takes place - eg verification of the EAP cert - was that intentional? 2) it appears that you are choosing to set the value to '0' when running some commands in debug mode - surely not the intention (or my misreading of those few lines).... I agree that the timeout should be configurable.... perhaps, in an ideal world you could have a minimum and maximum. server starts with minimum value...if the reply doesnt happen quick enough and theres a failure, it could log the error and then incremement the value by one second...up until it reaches the ceiling value. errors messages would then alert admin to the issue and hopefully external systems fixed before the 'hard' error boundary reached (which is all we have right now..a hard boundary) alan