hm... may be you had some problem with DNS at that point?  in my case (see below) all raise gaierror.

Since .gaierror seems to be derived from .error your change should work but it might veil the actual reason.
What about reverting back to gaierror but then adding additional "except socket.error, e" handling with its own logSys.warn/return list()?

```
$> python-all -c 'import socket; print(socket.gethostbyname_ex("examplesss.com"))'
Testing using /usr/bin/python2.4
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
socket.gaierror: (-2, 'Name or service not known')
Testing using /usr/bin/python2.5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: (-2, 'Name or service not known')
Testing using /usr/bin/python2.6
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
Testing using /usr/bin/python2.7
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
Testing using /usr/bin/python3.2
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
Testing using /usr/bin/python3.3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
Testing using /usr/bin/python2.6-dbg
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
[17817 refs]
Testing using /usr/bin/python2.7-dbg
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
[21032 refs]
Testing using /usr/bin/python3.2-dbg
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known
[41129 refs]
E: Failed with  /usr/bin/python2.4 /usr/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python3.2 /usr/bin/python3.3 /usr/bin/python2.6-dbg /usr/bin/python2.7-dbg /usr/bin/python3.2-dbg
```