Hello,

I downloaded python CVS tree, compiled it and ran tests. 

Two tests failed: urllib2 and mimetools. Both in the same fashion, 
when doing socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())

(It is used in mimetools.py library in line 130 and in test_urllib2.py 
test unit in line 352.)

In the interpreter it fails in the following way:

>>> import socket
>>> socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
socket.gaierror: (-2, 'Name or service not known')

The reason is that my hostname is bogus, no single DNS knows 
about it, and I don't see any reason to set up a DNS server on my 
box. Of course editing /etc/hosts and adding my hostname as an 
alias for 127.0.0.1 solves the problem.

Anyway I don't see any particular reason why the library shouldn't 
handle such situation i.e. when there's no connection between 
hostname and IP address.

What do you think about it? I can make a SF patch item to solve 
this issue if you like. I am quite sure adding try/catch will make it 
in both cases.

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Please provide a patch and attach it to this report.  Thanks.

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Patch #1462230 fix it

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Applied patch in rev. 43490.