[jaunty] causes random Launchpad timeouts with python-apport

Binary package hint: python-apt

Sorry for the weird title, but it is one of the weirdest bugs I ever saw. If I have the current jaunty python-apt installed (in current jaunty), I get intermittent Launchpad timeout errors in the apport retracers. The minimal reproducer is

python -c 'from glob import glob; from apport.crashdb_impl.launchpad import CrashDatabase; c=CrashDatabase(glob(".mozilla/firefox/*.default/cookies.sqlite")[0], None, {"distro": "ubuntu"}); r=c.download(300168); print r.keys()'

In about half the cases, I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py", line 129, in download
    b = Bug(id)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/launchpadbugs/connector.py", line 81, in __call__
    return self.cls(bug, url, connection=self.connection)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/launchpadbugs/html_bug.py", line 1317, in __init__
    bugpage = self.__connection.get(self.__url)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/launchpadbugs/http_connection.py", line 253, in get
    return self._safe_urlopen(url, None, False)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/launchpadbugs/http_connection.py", line 352, in _safe_urlopen
    raise exceptions.choose_LaunchpadError(error, url)
launchpadbugs.exceptions.LaunchpadURLError:
    * message: The read operation timed out
    * url: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/300168

(Note: with the default p-lp-bugs, the "message:" will be "Unknown error", I slightly tweaked p-lp-bugs to give the error name; does not change the bug, though).

If I downgrade python-apt to the intrepid version, I can run the command arbitrarily often in a row, and it always succeeds:

['NonfreeKernelModules', 'Title', 'StacktraceTop', 'ProcCmdline', 'CrashCounter', 'SourcePackage', 'CoreDump', 'ProcEnviron', 'Dependencies', 'Date', 'ThreadStacktrace', 'Package', 'Signal', 'ProblemType', 'ProcAttrCurrent', 'Architecture', 'Stacktrace', 'UserGroups', 'Disassembly', 'Uname', 'DistroRelease', 'ExecutablePath', 'ProcMaps']

I do not know what python-apt has to do with python-launchpad-bugs, though. :-(

It should also be noted that if I do not involve python-apport, but do the very same python-launchpad-bugs operations directly, it always succeeds. Presumably because python-apport imports python-apt, while python-launchpad-bugs alone doesn't.