that should be [tt]NODE=`tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'`[/tt]
And the reason [tt]root[/tt] doesn't translate is because you omitted the single quotes, resulting in the shell translating [tt][a-z][/tt] into the letter [tt]u[/tt] because in / directory (default home dir of root) there is a pathname called [tt]/u[/tt] (symlink to /home). In your homedir there probably aren't any single letter filenames or dirnames.
HTH,
p5wizard