Couple of things.
1. You're probably better off posting in the ruby forum (under open source/ruby) about this kind of thing.
2. Where is params[:user_data] coming from? I'm assuming that it's set in a login form somewhere - in which case you'd need to submit the form before it'll show up.
--
Charlie Harvey's website - linux, perl, java, anarchism and punk rock:
http://charlieharvey.org.uk