This is on Stefan's "Fedora without threads" buildbot, and it's the sets pretty-printing tests which fail:
http://buildbot.python.org/all/builders/AMD64%20Fedora%20without%20threads%203.x/builds/5119

I'd seen this locally, but hadn't got around to looking into it. I just realised it is likely related to the internal changes in sets, so I'll see if I can come up with a patch.

Running test_gdb on its own didn't reproduce the error in a threads-enabled build on Fedora 19. I'm now trying it with the same command line as the failed buildbot run:

    /python  ./Tools/scripts/run_tests.py -j 1 -u all -W --timeout=3600 --randseed=6475478

If that still passes, I'll try a without-threads build.

If I can't reproduce it even with threads disabled, then I'd be inclined to say "closed won't fix" on the grounds that Fedora 16 is already end-of-life.

The regular build (with threads) on that machine has the same problem.

Closing the issue is fine, but there does not seem to be an easy way
to upgrade Fedora from 16 to 19. Perhaps we can skip the test so that
the buildbot continues to be useful.

My F19 system (which works) shows gdb-7.6-34, while the new debugging output Antoine added shows 7.3.50.20110722-16.fc16 on F16

Maybe the new gdb version check needs to be looking for 7.4+ rather than 7.3+?

Hmm, I also noticed some issues with 2.7/3.2 on the RHEL 6 buildbot (similar to those previously reported in issue 15043).

I'll keep tinkering with it.

Looks like the RHEL 6 failures may have just been a change on the OS side that reintroduced the need for this old workaround: http://docs.python.org/devguide/faq.html#how-do-i-update-my-auto-load-safe-path-to-allow-test-gdb-to-run

I restored that FAQ, applied the config change on the buildbot and fixed the 2.7 branch to skip rather than fail (as it was previously supposed to, but the line that actually did the skip was lost in a backport from 3.x somewhere along the line).

Nick Coghlan <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> My F19 system (which works) shows gdb-7.6-34, while the new debugging output Antoine added shows 7.3.50.20110722-16.fc16 on F16
> 
> Maybe the new gdb version check needs to be looking for 7.4+ rather than 7.3+?

Yes, probably. We've already had another problem with the strange gdb version
on Fedora 16.

Well, I got tired of the OS gdb with an almost transcendental version
number and installed gdb from gnu.org.

The problem seems to have disappeared.

Since Fedora 16 is EOL, let's close this.