GDB debugging isn't going to happen any time soon; all of the gdb tests fail.
I re-compiled with the --with-pydebug option, thinking that would help, but it won't build; I get the following error when the newly built python starts to build packages:

Debug memory block at address p=0xb6003070: API 'a'
    795107700 bytes originally requested
    The 3 pad bytes at p-3 are not all FORBIDDENBYTE (0xfb):
        at p-3: 0x2f *** OUCH
        at p-2: 0x00 *** OUCH
        at p-1: 0x00 *** OUCH
    Because memory is corrupted at the start, the count of bytes requested
       may be bogus, and checking the trailing pad bytes may segfault.
    The 4 pad bytes at tail=0xe56491e4 are Segmentation fault
generate-posix-vars failed

Additional things I've attemptedto try to resolve the test_hash failure, based on this  bug report (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-bugs-list/2015-March/267442.html)
1) compiling with -mno-unaligned-access
2) compiling with FNV as the default hash algorithm.

Neither worked. At this point I am at a loss and am beginning to think there may be a problem with my device.  Any suggestions are welcome.