Python Timeout doesn't seem to work

Question

I have the following code;

def ip_addresses():
    # Get external ipv4
    try:
        response = urllib2.urlopen('http://icanhazip.com', timeout = 2)
        out = response.read()
        public_ipv4 = re.sub('\n', '', out)
    except:
        public_ipv4 = "failed to retrieve public_ipv4"

In normal circumstance, when response from http://icanhazip.com is received, the output is something like this;

xxx@xxx:/var/log$ date && tail -1 xxx.log
Tue Jul 25 **07:43**:18 UTC 2017  {"public_ipv4": "208.185.193.131"}, "date": "2017-07-25 **07:43**:01.558242"

So, the current date and the date of the log generation are same. However, when there is an exception, this is happening;

xxx@xxx:/var/log$ date && tail -1 xxx.log
Tue Jul 25 **07:30**:25 UTC 2017  {"public_ipv4": "failed to retrieve public_ipv4"},"date": "2017-07-25 **07:23**:01.525444"

Why is the "timeout" not working?

Answer 1

Try to get the verbose exception details in this manner and then investigate what is the error all about, the difference in time Use this format...

import sys
try:
    1 / 0
except:
    print sys.exc_info()