Debian ship a completely different version of netcat from Fedora. Not just a different version, but it appears to be a different codebase. Debian's netcat doesn't support the (very useful) -U option, so this code fails in src/remote_internal.c: cmd_argv[j++] = strdup (command); //..... cmd_argv[j++] = strdup (server); cmd_argv[j++] = strdup (netcat ? netcat : "nc"); cmd_argv[j++] = strdup ("-U"); cmd_argv[j++] = strdup (sockname ? sockname : LIBVIRTD_PRIV_UNIX_SOCKET); cmd_argv[j++] = 0; As a result of this remote-over-ssh fails on Debian. I'm not completely sure how to solve this at the moment. If anyone has any ideas ... Rich. -- Emerging Technologies, Red Hat - http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/ Registered Address: Red Hat UK Ltd, Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TE, United Kingdom. Registered in England and Wales under Company Registration No. 03798903