Sometimes urllib2 raises URLError when trying POST with httpS

[mrDoctorWho0]

BPO	19057
Nosy	@tiran, @bitdancer
Files	code.py: a part of code

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2016-09-08.22:46:01.402>
created_at = <Date 2013-09-20.10:55:37.819>
labels = ['invalid', 'type-bug', 'library']
title = 'Sometimes urllib2 raises URLError when trying POST with httpS'
updated_at = <Date 2016-09-08.22:46:01.400>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/mrDoctorWho0'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2016-09-08.22:46:01.400>
actor = 'christian.heimes'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2016-09-08.22:46:01.402>
closer = 'christian.heimes'
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2013-09-20.10:55:37.819>
creator = 'mrDoctorWho0..'
dependencies = []
files = ['31825']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 19057
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['198141', '198147', '275199']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['christian.heimes', 'r.david.murray', 'mrDoctorWho0..']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue19057'
versions = ['Python 2.7']

[mrDoctorWho0]

Trying to use POST-request to https://vk.com and sometimes library raise an error.
File "library/vkApi.py", line 31, in post
response = self.Opener.open(request)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 404, in open
response = self._open(req, data)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 422, in _open
'_open', req)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 382, in _call_chain
result = func(*args)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1222, in https_open
return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPSConnection, req)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1184, in do_open
raise URLError(err)
URLError: <urlopen error _ssl.c:489: The handshake operation timed out>

This exception appears randomly, connection is ok 100%. I tried it on different machines with python 2.7.4 and 2.7.3.

[bitdancer]

I would guess that if you did a network trace you'd find out there really was a packet that did not arrive (a timeout). Note that detecting this is complicated by the fact that ssl is involved. (I don't know the details, but I remember someone saying that more than one packet may be involved in something that looks like a single event at the OpenSSL level.)

It is certainly *possible* that there is a bug at the OpenSSL or (less likely) the _ssl module level, but the first step in debugging it would be to get that network trace, I think...

As I said, though, I'm not an expert in this area, perhaps someone who is will have other suggestions.

[tiran]

I'm closing this ticket. It's old and hasn't seen any activity in almost three years.