Hello! I finally figured what was going wrong with my script. Jonas, I have tried implementing your suggestions. using mktemp, XXXXX, and also a -m 077. The code doesnt work for some reason that way. lpr gets me a failed job. Also that code is basically ported from this guide, <a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-dvi-filter.html">http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-dvi-filter.html</a> Jonas, Silbe, notice this [Vamsi@localhost Desktop]$ $(abiword --to=ps /home/Vamsi/lololo.odt); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo 'hello'; else echo 'what'; fi hello [Vamsi@localhost Desktop]$ $(abiword --to=doc /home/Vamsi/lololo.odt); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo 'hello'; else echo 'what'; fi what [Vamsi@localhost Desktop]$ $(set -e abiword --to=doc /home/Vamsi/lololo.odt); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo 'hello'; else echo 'what'; fi what [Vamsi@localhost Desktop]$ $(set -e abiword --to=ps /home/Vamsi/lololo.odt); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo 'hello'; else echo 'what'; fi what [Vamsi@localhost Desktop]$ $(abiword --to=ps /home/Vamsi/lololo.odt); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo 'hello'; else echo 'what'; fi hello [Vamsi@localhost Desktop]$ $(abiword --to=ps /home/Vamsi/lololo.odt); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo 'hello'; else echo 'what'; fi hello Set -e basically yields me the same case, that is even on an error it returns me a 0. But without set -e , it works great. Moving on, Its like this, The lp user of lp group ( cups script executor) messes up with permissions when executing commands in a subshell, that's really messed up. my rationale is, in a subshell the lp user has no longer domain. Also, CUPS doesnt write to our /tmp folder, instead has its own folder defined somewhere. So what I made is, sandbox1="${TMPDIR1:-/tmp}/tempcups.$$$$" (umask 077 && mkdir "$sandbox1") || exit 1 I made another temp folder for the subshells to execute their commands And, andres, it initially does try to convert to doc. The algorithm is pretty much like this, 1) We try to write to some new path besides the same folder, if it works, we are running 2.6.6 and plus, if not we are on 2.6.6-- - We cannot check for ~<a href="http://somepath.ps">somepath.ps</a> here as 2.6.8 doesnt have that capability, so that would be inviting a hole as we would be skipping for 2.6.8 as well! # $fn happens to be supplied variable $(abiword --to=$sandbox1/temp123.doc $fn) # if this doesnt work, do the following, as 2.6.6- could only do operations in the same folder, # we are copying ;) if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then #our dummy file fn1="$sandbox/temp123.odt" cp "$fn" "$fn1" # Call abiword quietly, securely abiword --to="ps" "`echo "$fn1" | sed -e 's/odt$/doc/' `" fn2="`echo "$fn1" | sed -e 's/odt$/ps/' `" 2) Now we enter the case what if we are in fact on 2.6.6+, well now come two paths again, 1) are we 2.6.8, or 2) anything other than 2.6.8 (again 2.6.8 cant write to ps directly, we need an intermediate doc conversion for this effect) # Call abiword quietly, securely #check if our version doesn't require an intermediate conversion, if it does, do it $(abiword --to="$sandbox1/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" "$fn") if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then abiword --to="$sandbox/temp123.doc" "$fn" abiword --to="$sandbox/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" "$sandbox/temp123.doc" else #abiword --to="$sandbox/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" "$fn" fn2="$sandbox1/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" Andres, script works great for ALLL cases :D #!/bin/bash # CUPS filter to process ODT files using abiword # $6 happens to be the path to file passed as argument for debugging purposes i am use $1 fn="$6" #for our subshell convenience sandbox1="${TMPDIR1:-/tmp}/tempcups.$$$$" (umask 077 && mkdir "$sandbox1") || exit 1 # we are creating a dummy folder, which can take different file types. sandbox="${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/t6cups-odftops.$$$$" (umask 077 && mkdir "$sandbox") || exit 1 #The condition which checks whether our abiword is 2.6.6+ or 2.6.6- $(abiword --to="$sandbox1/temp123.doc" "$fn") if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then #our dummy file fn1="$sandbox/temp123.odt" cp "$fn" "$fn1" # Call abiword quietly, securely abiword --to="ps" "`echo "$fn1" | sed -e 's/odt$/doc/' `" fn2="`echo "$fn1" | sed -e 's/odt$/ps/' `" else # Call abiword quietly, securely #check if our version doesn't require an intermediate conversion, if it does, do it $(abiword --to="$sandbox1/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" "$fn") if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then abiword --to="$sandbox/temp123.doc" "$fn" abiword --to="$sandbox/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" "$sandbox/temp123.doc" else #abiword --to="$sandbox/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" "$fn" fn2="$sandbox1/<a href="http://temp123.ps">temp123.ps</a>" fi fi cat "$fn2" #remove the sandbox folder, for debugging purposes check by commenting the following line and see what is in the /tmp/ folder #rm -rf $sandbox #rm -rf $sandbox1