Sudo hangs in 10.04

Hello friends,

My company has 10.04/Gnome deployed across several thousand desktops, and I only see this problem come up every now and then, but I'm really having an issue with it. It doesn't help that I am a relative newcomer to Ubuntu--most of my experience is long ago, and with Free-BSD to boot!

Anyhow, my issue lies in the SUDO command. I am working on a virtual machine that I have no physical access to, though I do have root privs. The machine is severely hanging on sudo.

For example, if I issue the command 'sudo echo hi' in a term window I am greeted with several minutes (3 to 5) of a blinking cursor, sometimes much longer, before a request to authenticate pops up. Once it does it's not an issue; immediately upon entering the PW the term will echo.

I checked to make sure that /etc/hostname file contained the same computer name as the /etc/hosts files...they match. In /etc/hosts my first two lines are:

127.0.0.1 VMname.domain VMname localhost
127.0.1.1 ubuntu32-template.domain ubuntu-32-template

Since I was literally dropped into this position with no training I don't have any idea what the ubuntu32-template business is about; best guess is that it's put in by the script building the VDI.

I've Googled this for a good part of the afternoon and found that this is a "bug"--has anyone yet proposed a fix for this? Since this is in a development environment I'd like to keep the kernel where it is (2.6.32-38-generic) unless it can be upgraded without potentially damaging anything...I just have very little idea as to what's going on here until I have more time. This is NOT a 'requirement' though--if upgrading the kernel would help and not do any harm let me know and I'll do so immediately.

Any help that anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated! Sorry for the lack of information; I know that its all not much help. If you have anything specific to ask I'll be happy to look/answer though!