Why urllib2 doesn't work for me?

Question

I have installed 3 different python script on my ubuntu 10.04 32 bit machine with python 2.6.5.

All of these use the urllib2 and I always get this error:

urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 110] Connection timed out>

Why ?

Examples:

>>> import urllib2
>>> response = urllib2.urlopen("http://www.google.com")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 391, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 409, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1161, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1136, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 110] Connection timed out>



>>> response = urllib2.urlopen("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=hello&rpp=10&page=1")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 391, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 409, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1161, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1136, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 110] Connection timed out>

UPDATE:

$ ping google.com
PING google.com (72.14.234.104) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from google.com (72.14.234.104): icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=25.3 ms
64 bytes from google.com (72.14.234.104): icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=24.6 ms
64 bytes from google.com (72.14.234.104): icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=25.1 ms
64 bytes from google.com (72.14.234.104): icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=25.0 ms
64 bytes from google.com (72.14.234.104): icmp_seq=5 ttl=54 time=23.9 ms
^C
--- google.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 23.959/24.832/25.365/0.535 ms


$ w3m http://www.google.com
w3m: Can't load http://www.google.com.

$ telnet google.com 80
Trying 1.0.0.0...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out

UPDATE 2:

I am at home and I am using a router and an Access point :-. However I have just noticed that Firefox doesn't work for me. But chrome, synaptic and other browsers like Midori and Epiphany, etc does work.

UPDATE 3:

>>> useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu/10.04 Chromium/6.0.472.62 Chrome/6.0.472.62 Safari/534.3)'
>>> request = urllib2.Request('http://www.google.com/')
>>> request.add_header('User-agent', useragent )
>>> urllib2.urlopen(request)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 391, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 409, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1161, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1136, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 110] Connection timed out>

UPDATE 4:

>>> socket.setdefaulttimeout(50)
>>> urllib2.urlopen('http://www.google.com')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 391, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 409, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1161, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1136, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 110] Connection timed out>

UPDATE 5:

Wireshark results ( packet sniffer ):

Firefox: http://bit.ly/chtynm

Chrome: http://bit.ly/9ZjILK

Midori: http://bit.ly/cKilC4

midori is another browser that works for me. Only Firefox doesn't work.

Answer 1

As suggested, troubleshoot the network setup first.

First, check that you can ping the host you're trying to connect to:

$ ping www.google.com

Then try a HTTP connection using for instance w3m:

$ w3m http://www.google.com