http://buildbot.python.org/all/builders/x86-64%20El%20Capitan%202.7/builds/161/steps/test/logs/stdio

0:04:49 [173/403/1] test_signal failed
test test_signal failed -- Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/buildbot/buildarea/2.7.billenstein-elcapitan/build/Lib/test/test_signal.py", line 500, in test_setitimer_tiny
    self.assertEqual(self.hndl_called, True)
AssertionError: False != True

It's related to bpo-30807, "setitimer() can disable timer by mistake".

Test code:

    def test_setitimer_tiny(self):
        # bpo-30807: C setitimer() takes a microsecond-resolution interval.
        # Check that float -> timeval conversion doesn't round
        # the interval down to zero, which would disable the timer.
        self.itimer = signal.ITIMER_REAL
        signal.setitimer(self.itimer, 1e-6)
        time.sleep(1)
        self.assertEqual(self.hndl_called, True)

It seems like build 161 is the first since build 142 which failed.

I don't see this failure in recent 3.6 and 3.x builds.

So the failure seems very rare.

I wrote https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/3165 "[2.7] bpo-30263: regrtest: add system load average", it might help to understand why test_signal fails randomly (check if there is a correlation with the system load).

I didn't see the failure recently. I close the issue.