Do you have any alternate authentication methods defined in /etc/nsswitch.conf Such as NIS? That can make things take a while. It will look at NIS even for the root account. Steve From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Robert Marino Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2013 7:45 AM To: Mahmood Naderan; scientific-linux-users Subject: Re: long time to login as root No it usually means you have a high IO wait or your CPU cores are nearly maxed out. Note heavy reliance on swap space due to insufficient ram can cause high IO wait too. -- Sent from my HP Pre3 ________________________________ On Jun 2, 2013 5:26 AM, Mahmood Naderan <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Hi Whenever I enter the root password after "su" command, it takes about 13 seconds!! to see the root prompt. Is that normal? Regards, Mahmood