net/http: warning: Content-Type did not set; using application/x-www-form-urlencoded
and then a password attempt. is it working? it's runing through the passwords, but not sure if its actually applying them.
Yes, that's fine. The wallet doesn't care about the content-type. If you want to see everything it's doing in detail then make this change (add the middle line):
response = Net::HTTP.new("localhost", $rpc_port).request(request)
puts request.body, response.body
if response.code == "401" ; puts "Incorrect RPC user/pass" ; exit 1 ; end