[Bug 50971] Re: kdesu will not start apps

Nicolai Hähnle prefect_ at gmx.net
Wed Feb 21 13:48:11 UTC 2007


Okay, I take that back. I'm almost certain that bug #72545 is a
duplicate.

The following steps reproduce the bug reliably for me:
1. Open Konsole
2. Do a sudo -k to get a clean slate
3. Run e.g. sudo ls (just some arbitrary, not too-complex command; sudo dmesg works as well)
4. exit (this should close Konsole)
5. Immediately launch Adept

No password dialog will appear, kdesu will hang.

Here's an explanation attempt (with my very limited knowledge about sudo):
Whenever you make a successful sudo attempt, sudo records that somewhere in order to save you from having to retype your password. Now sudo must somehow remember the context in which you made that successful attempt, so it stores the terminal that in ran on. In step 3, this happens to be some pseudo terminal.

In step 4, you close that pseudo terminal, but obviously sudo won't know
that, so the record of the successful sudo attempt is still there.

In step 5, kdesu launches sudo, using a pseudo terminal for
communication. It will just use the first available pseudo terminal,
which happens to be the one that we just closed. Sudo will see the
applicable record and thus not prompt for a password. Kdesu gets
confused by that and hangs forever.

-- 
kdesu will not start apps
https://launchpad.net/bugs/50971




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