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Description of problem:
Set your system SELinux to disabled (not permissive) and run:
# mkdir /tmp/foo
Now it is:
# ls -ldZ /tmp/foo
drwxr-xr-x root root ?                                /tmp/foo

# python
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Jan 21 2011, 12:09:10) 
[GCC 4.4.4 20100726 (Red Hat 4.4.4-13)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from selinux import lgetfilecon, is_selinux_enabled
>>> lgetfilecon('/tmp/foo')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
OSError: [Errno 61] No data available


While on RHEL5.7 I get as result:
[-1, None]
and on Fedora 14:
[10, 'unlabeled']

I would expect to have on RHEL6 either None or 'unlabeled', but I do not expect exception.

It block BZ 688461, but we will probably workaround it using try/except as we could not wait for correct fix ... unless it will make it to RHEL6.1

The "selinux" python module is part of the libselinux-python rpm, a subpackage of libselinux.  Reassigning to the correct component.

This is not a bug.  This is by design.  You should catch the error.

Daniel, can you please enlighten me, why it is feature (or design)? When it behave completely different from RHEL5 and from Fedora14?

Because in python an application that fails on a read type access should throw an exception. RHEL5 we did not have this code.

I guess you could report this as a bug in RHEL5 that libselinux should be throwing exceptions on failures.

We just added a patch for libsemanage to throw exceptions on failures also.  This is only fixed in F15, currently.