The problem is that there is probably a network problem. The most common cause is that Linux can not look up the name of the machine (if you set up networking to have a machine name). The machine pauses waiting for the network timeout of DNS lookups, and will eventually bring up the login prompt. Log in as root and check the usual culprits for a problem. If you are directly on a network with a DNS server, check to see if the file /etc/resolv.conf has the correct values for your machine's DNS server. Check with your systems administrator that the values are correct. If you are using Linux on a network without a DNS server (or this box is going to be the DNS server), then you will need to edit the /etc/hosts file to have the hostname and IP address so that the lookups will occur correctly. The format of the /etc/hosts file is like the following example: 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain 192.168.200.1 mymachine mymachine.mynetwork.net Where the machine is called mymachine.