with timeout(...):

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> 
> I beleive the convention is when calling an OS function which might
> block the global interpreter lock is dropped, thus allowing other
> python bytecode to run.


So what? That doesn't help you, as you are single-threaded here. The 
released lock won't prevent the called C-code from taking as long as it 
wants. |And there is nothing you can do about that.

Diez