Balazs, An Etherlite is a console concentrator. Basically, it's a serial connection from the server back to the etherlite. We use a piece of software called conserver to access our system consoles over this etherlite connection. When one of these ports hang, syslog-ng hangs (I'm assuming because it's trying to write out to the console) and this causes su commands and others to hang. If you'd like, send me an email offline and I can give you some more background. Thanks for responding to this. Jesse Keefe Sr Analyst, Open Systems Convergys Corp 513-723-3689