better timeout handling

diff --combined sfa/util/xmlrpcprotocol.py
index ca6bbea,9232e07..0c07acc
--- 1/sfa/util/xmlrpcprotocol.py
--- 2/sfa/util/xmlrpcprotocol.py
+++ b/sfa/util/xmlrpcprotocol.py
@@@ -46,31 -46,15 +46,32 @@@ class XMLRPCTransport(xmlrpclib.Transpo
          # host may be a string, or a (host, x509-dict) tuple
          host, extra_headers, x509 = self.get_host_info(host)
          if need_HTTPSConnection:
-             conn = HTTPSConnection(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file, timeout=self.timeout) #**(x509 or {}))
+             #conn = HTTPSConnection(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file, timeout=self.timeout) #**(x509 or {}))
+             conn = HTTPSConnection(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file) #**(x509 or {}))
          else:
 -            #conn = HTTPS(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file, timeout=self.timeout) #**(x509 or {}))
 -            conn = HTTPS(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file) #**(x509 or {}))
 +            try:
 +                conn = HTTPS(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file, timeout=self.timeout) #**(x509 or {}))
 +            except TypeError:
 +                # some versions don't have a timeout argument
 +                conn = HTTPS(host, None, key_file=self.key_file, cert_file=self.cert_file) #**(x509 or {}))
  
          if hasattr(conn, 'set_timeout'):
              conn.set_timeout(self.timeout)
  
 +        # Some logic to deal with timeouts. It appears that some (or all) versions
 +        # of python don't set the timeout after the socket is created. We'll do it
 +        # ourselves by forcing the connection to connect, finding the socket, and
 +        # calling settimeout() on it. (tested with python 2.6)
 +        if self.timeout:
 +            if hasattr(conn, "_conn"):
 +                # HTTPS is a wrapper around HTTPSConnection
 +                real_conn = conn._conn
 +            else:
 +                real_conn = conn
 +            conn.connect()
 +            if hasattr(real_conn, "sock") and hasattr(real_conn.sock, "settimeout"):
 +                real_conn.sock.settimeout(self.timeout)
 +
          return conn
  
      def getparser(self):