Selenium in Ruby - can't get it working, and it's reset firefox to it's default installed state

I've been using Selenium (with selenium rc, and the ide) in ruby, with rspec, for some time and it's been great. I recently wiped my installation of ubuntu, however, and installed ubuntu 9.10. I set selenium up again, which consisted of installing the selenium-client gem (1.2.17) and adding the selenium ide plugin in firefox.

When i run a test, eg my most basic 'sanity check' test which just loads the google homepage, it hangs for ages then comes back with this error (below).

Also, when i start firefox, it's gone back to its default installed state - no firebug, no selenium ide, no delicious etc, and it's forgotten my config settings. It's as if it's loading the vanilla firefox that is used by the selenium rc server.

here's that stack trace - can anyone give me any advice/help? i'm kind of lost... thanks - max

Timeout::Error in 'google test can find Selenium'
execution expired
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:54:in `rbuf_fill'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:56:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:132:in `rbuf_fill'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:116:in `readuntil'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:126:in `readline'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2020:in `read_status_line'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2009:in `read_new'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1050:in `request'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1037:in `request'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:543:in `start'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http开发者_StackOverflow.rb:1035:in `request'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:845:in `post'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/selenium-client-1.2.17/lib/selenium/client/protocol.rb:88:in `http_post'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/selenium-client-1.2.17/lib/selenium/client/protocol.rb:12:in `remote_control_command'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:56:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/selenium-client-1.2.17/lib/selenium/client/protocol.rb:11:in `remote_control_command'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/selenium-client-1.2.17/lib/selenium/client/protocol.rb:19:in `string_command'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/selenium-client-1.2.17/lib/selenium/client/base.rb:85:in `start_new_browser_session'
./spec/selenium/tests/regular_user/google_spec.rb:12:
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:70:in `instance_eval'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:70:in `eval_each_fail_fast'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:70:in `each'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:70:in `eval_each_fail_fast'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_group_hierarchy.rb:17:in `run_before_each'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:103:in `run_before_each'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:124:in `before_each_example'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:39:in `execute'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:37:in `execute'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_group_methods.rb:214:in `run_examples'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_group_methods.rb:212:in `each'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_group_methods.rb:212:in `run_examples'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/example/example_group_methods.rb:103:in `run'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:23:in `run'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:22:in `each'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:22:in `run'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/runner/options.rb:151:in `run_examples'
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.2.9/lib/spec/runner/command_line.rb:9:in `run'
script/spec:5:

Actually i fixed this by installing the latest seleniumrc server. thanks for looking though :)