The buildslaves "i386 Ubuntu" have been exhibiting some strange behaviour for some time now:

======================================================================
ERROR: test_protocol_sslv2 (test.test_ssl.ThreadedTests)
Connecting to an SSLv2 server with various client options
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/scratch/pybot-buildarea/2.7.klose-ubuntu-i386/build/Lib/test/test_ssl.py", line 879, in test_protocol_sslv2
    try_protocol_combo(ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv2, ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv2, True)
  File "/scratch/pybot-buildarea/2.7.klose-ubuntu-i386/build/Lib/test/test_ssl.py", line 751, in try_protocol_combo
    ciphers="ALL", chatty=False)
  File "/scratch/pybot-buildarea/2.7.klose-ubuntu-i386/build/Lib/test/test_ssl.py", line 703, in server_params_test
    s.connect((HOST, server.port))
  File "/scratch/pybot-buildarea/2.7.klose-ubuntu-i386/build/Lib/ssl.py", line 295, in connect
    self.ca_certs, self.ciphers)
SSLError: _ssl.c:312: Invalid SSL protocol variant specified.

(http://www.python.org/dev/buildbot/builders/i386%20Ubuntu%202.7/builds/78/steps/test/logs/stdio)

======================================================================
ERROR: test_constructor (test.test_ssl.ContextTests)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/scratch/pybot-buildarea/3.x.klose-ubuntu-i386/build/Lib/test/test_ssl.py", line 179, in test_constructor
    ctx = ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv2)
  File "/scratch/pybot-buildarea/3.x.klose-ubuntu-i386/build/Lib/ssl.py", line 96, in __new__
    return _SSLContext.__new__(cls, protocol)
ssl.SSLError: failed to allocate SSL context

(http://www.python.org/dev/buildbot/builders/i386%20Ubuntu%203.x/builds/1689/steps/test/logs/stdio)

Matthias, can you give us more information about the system setup on these buildbots? It seems its OpenSSL library refuses to allocate any SSL context for the SSL v2 protocol. Is it some kind of patch added by the Ubuntu OpenSSL maintainers in order to disable SSLv2 entirely?