A common typo. You mean bug #50971. I believe your interpretation of what happens is correct. Incidentally, I have been exploring this issue too, after my last comment, and meaning to post here in essence the same explanation as yours. (I arrived at the same conclusion based on observing what happens, and haven't looked at the code.)
-- kdesu fails when invoked immediately after sudo from terminal https://launchpad.net/bugs/72545 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
