diff --git a/bin/stack b/bin/stack
index a1c6d13485ea..c8a99f073c0b 100755
--- a/bin/stack
+++ b/bin/stack
@@ -118,6 +118,9 @@ def do_request(controller, method, params=None):
     req = urllib2.Request(url, data, headers)
     try:
         resp = urllib2.urlopen(req)
+    except urllib2.URLError, e:
+        print 'Failed to connect to %s: %s' % (url, e.reason)
+        sys.exit(1)
     except urllib2.HTTPError, e:
         print e.read()
         sys.exit(1)