I came back from holidays today to my capybara and selenium powered tests throwing this error:
Net::ReadTimeout: Net::ReadTimeout
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/protocol.rb:158:in `rescue in rbuf_fill'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/protocol.rb:152:in `rbuf_fill'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/protocol.rb:134:in `readuntil'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/protocol.rb:144:in `readline'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http/response.rb:39:in `read_status_line'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http/response.rb:28:in `read_new'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:1408:in `block in transport_request'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:1405:in `catch'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:1405:in `transport_request'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:1378:in `request'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:1371:in `block in request'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:853:in `start'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.5/lib/ruby/2.1.0/net/http.rb:1369:in `request'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/remote/http/default.rb:83:in `response_for'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/remote/http/default.rb:39:in `request'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/remote/http/common.rb:40:in `call'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/remote/bridge.rb:640:in `raw_execute'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/remote/bridge.rb:618:in `execute'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/remote/bridge.rb:112:in `get'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.44.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/common/navigation.rb:14:in `to'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/capybara-2.4.4/lib/capybara/selenium/driver.rb:45:in `visit'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/capybara-2.4.4/lib/capybara/session.rb:227:in `visit'
/Users/pupeno/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.5@watu/gems/capybara-2.4.4/lib/capybara/dsl.rb:51:in `block (2 levels) in <module:DSL>'
Essentially, nothing changed before I left and these tests just work for other people (that is, other computers). In an effort to have them work again, I upgraded Firefox, I added some hostnames to my /etc/hosts to remove DNS lookups, upgraded all gems (including capybara). I'm running out of ideas.
The environment is OS X 10.9.5. I rebooted a couple of times just in case. I'm running Ruby 2.1.5, Rails 3.2.21, MiniTest 4.7.5.
Any other ideas to try?