Just to update on progress from that thread...
The --rebuild progressed for me until the 18th block file, then raised the same socket error just reported. Armory GUI was still responsive, but stopped processing further blocks.
Not had chance to look in detail at the satoshiIsAvailable() method, but perhaps socket creation should be within the try block? Might hack that myself and give it a go.
Are you running a 32-bit OS? I
just committed the first version that should build on 32-bit *nix, but haven't had much chance to test online mode (only tested offline mode). pvz appears to be in 32-bit as well, and I wonder if that's related...