sslutil: display a better error message when CA file loading fails Before, sslcontext.load_verify_locations() would raise a ssl.SSLError which would be caught further up the stack and converted to a urlerror. By that time, we lost track of what actually errored. Trapping the error here gives users a slightly more actionable error message. The behavior between Python <2.7.9 and Python 2.7.9+ differs. This is because our fake SSLContext class installed on <2.7.9 doesn't actually do anything during load_verify_locations: it defers actions until wrap_socket() time. Unfortunately, a number of errors can occur at wrap_socket() time and we're unable to ascertain what the root cause is. But that shouldn't stop us from providing better error messages to people running a modern and secure Python version.