smtplib STARTTLS problems

[Tim Williams]

I have a working SMTP client that I need to add TLS capability to, I
absolutely need the client to timeout within a specified time, but when I
use the sock.timeout() line it freezes the reading of chars from SSLFakeFile
used during TLS instead of timing out the client connection. I am
working from my own hacked version of smtplib, but can demonstrate the
problem using the standard module (Python 2.3.4). Can anyone suggest a
workaround hack that I can impliment in my own version of smtplib ??

Thanks in advance

Working version =

import smtplib as mx
s=mx.SMTP('e32. co.us.ibm.com')
s.set_debugleve l(1)
s.ehlo('x')
resp, null = s.starttls()
if resp == 220:
s.ehlo('x')
s.mail('me@mydo main.com')
s.quit()



Non-Working version =

import smtplib as mx
s=mx.SMTP('e32. co.us.ibm.com')
s.sock.settimeo ut(20)
s.set_debugleve l(1)
s.ehlo('x')
resp, null = s.starttls()
if resp == 220:
s.ehlo('x')
s.mail('me@mydo main.com')
s.quit()

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
File "tls2.py", line 8, in ?
print s.ehlo('x')
File "C:\Python23\li b\smtplib.py", line 404, in ehlo
(code,msg)=self .getreply()
File "C:\Python23\li b\smtplib.py", line 356, in getreply
line = self.file.readl ine()
File "C:\Python23\li b\smtplib.py", line 160, in readline
chr = self.sslobj.rea d(1)
sslerror: The read operation timed out