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The symptom is an exact duplicate of the symptom reported in the following (closed) issue:
http://bugs.python.org/issue9775
The issue is also related to the following other issues:
http://bugs.python.org/issue4106
http://bugs.python.org/issue9205
http://bugs.python.org/issue9207
To reproduce the symptom driving the patches that will be attached to this issue:
 git clone git://github.com/pypa/pip.git
 cd pip
 /any/python setup.py dev
 /any/python setup.py test
You can either wait for the entire test suite to finish or you can press ctrl-C at any time (the tests take a long time). In either case, a traceback like the following will be printed to the console.
 Error in atexit._run_exitfuncs:
 Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/home/chrism/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/atexit.py", line 24, in _run_exitfuncs
 func(*targs, **kargs)
 File "/home/chrism/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/multiprocessing/util.py", line 284, in _exit_function
 info('process shutting down')
 TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
 Error in sys.exitfunc:
 Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/home/chrism/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/atexit.py", line 24, in _run_exitfuncs
 func(*targs, **kargs)
 File "/home/chrism/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/multiprocessing/util.py", line 284, in _exit_function
 info('process shutting down')
 TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
From what I understand in other issues, multiprocessing.util._exit_function shouldn't actually be called *after* the containing module's globals are destroyed (it should be called before), but this does indeed happen.
Patches will be attached that anticipate the symptom and prevent a shutdown error. One will be attached for Python 2.7 branch, the other for the Python tip. Each causes functions that are called at shutdown time to keep a reference around to other functions and globals used within the function, and each does some checks for the insane state and prevents an error from happening in this insane state.