# Privilege escalation timeout problem

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/privilege-escalation-timeout-problem/24635>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [June 2, 2017, 2:53pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/privilege-escalation-timeout-problem/24635 "2017-06-02T14:53:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mark.haney](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9e5f3/32.png) [@mark.haney](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mark.haney)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2017, 2:53pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/privilege-escalation-timeout-problem/24635/1 "2017-06-02T14:53:35Z")

</div>

It’s been a bit since I’ve used ansible, but I’m pretty sure I’ve not completely lost it. I’m working on getting a simple privilege escalation command to ping properly. All my previous work has been communicating to hosts via root, but this is maybe not possible for this new group of servers. Here’s what I’m seeing:

ansible host0 --become --become-method=su --ask-become-pass -m ping  
SU password:  
[rad0.host0.net](http://rad0.host0.net) | FAILED! =\> {  
“failed”: true,  
“msg”: "Timeout (12s) waiting for privilege escalation prompt: "  
}

So, I did a quick search and found two possible ways to fix this: increase the timeout, or set the transport to paramiko. Neither of these worked. This is on a CentOS 7 box with ansible-2.3.0.0-3.el7.noarch and python-2.7.5-48.el7.x86\_64.

Anyone have any ideas? I know the password I’m supplying it correct, as I’ve tested it repeatedly. I’m just not sure what’s going on.

FWIW, the host I’m connecting to is a CentOS 6.9 box with python-2.6.6-66.el6\_8.x86\_64 and openssh-server-5.3p1-122.el6.x86\_64.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 10:54pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/privilege-escalation-timeout-problem/24635/2 "2017-06-05T22:54:48Z")

</div>

2.3.0 had a bug preventing the su prompt from ever matching.

This is fixed in the 2.3.1 release.