I was using httplib to power my xml rpc script.

I had problems when I wanted to use SSL and I got this error:
 File "/usr/lib/python2.5/httplib.py", line 1109, in recv
   return self._ssl.read(len)
socket.sslerror: (8, 'EOF occurred in violation of protocol')

I figured out this was because of poor error handling in python.

May I suggest this as a fix to this bug:
$ diff /usr/lib/python2.5/httplib.py /usr/lib/python2.5/httplib.py~
1109,1112c1109
<         try:
<             return self._ssl.read(len)
<         except socket.sslerror:
<             return
---
>         return self._ssl.read(len)

Just a note. I am by no means a python expert, just good enough to get
my work done.
I use Ubuntu gutsy.

Patch is inlined in the opening comment for the issue.

I have a slightly different version of this patch in the new SSL code.  
It (optionally, but defaulting to True) catches SSL_ERROR_EOF and returns 
None, but allows other ssl errors to go through.

I'll close this when the fix gets into all the branches (right now it's
in the pre-2.6 code, and in the 3K code, but not yet in the 2.6 branch).

I've set version to 2.6 and priority to high so we don't forget it.

I believe this is now fixed in the SVN.

There's a new parameter on SSLSocket, suppress_ragged_eofs, which allows
it to be enabled selectively, but default to True.

I think the default of suppress_ragged_eofs=True was a bad idea because by default you cannot tell a secure EOF signal from an insecure error; see Issue 27815.