Well there are a number of possible problms I think - it's hard to say without know more about what "world" and "Monika" are. Not to mention, what OS are you using? (Some sort of Unix I assume, but more info might be helpful.) Most importatnly, you probably need to get tthe Process insance associated with your exec() command, and read what is being written to standard error and standard output. (And you really should do this using separate threads.) This JavaWorld article has more info.