metadot 6.4.5.4 running on an amazon aws slice running Fedora 8 (werewolf)

Actually have 2 slices running.. on one slice doing the following:

Login as admin /
Go into edit mode.
Click on an existing home page.
Click on New Page.
When the page paints out it will throw the following error.

The message is a pop-up that says:
ERROR [createSelect]:
Can't find the requested dropdown definition

If you say OK you get:
FIXME: Unknown toolbar item: function each(iterator, context) {
var index = 0;
try {
this._each(function (value) {iterator.call(context, value, index++);});
} catch (e) {
if (e != $break) {
throw e;
}
}
return this;
}

results in an infinite loop of pop-ups. The only way to break the cycle is to hold down, Alt-<- and click the ok in the box until it backs out of that page.

In the apache error_log, there is a file not found pointing to
./metadot/html/js/htmlarea3/plugins/SpellChecker/img/undefined.gif

The other slice is set up exactly the same.. literally an scp -R of all the requisite trees. Problem does not happen. And yes, I scanned both machines for the undefined.gif file and it does NOT exist on either.

Any thoughts on what is going on and how to fix will be greatly appreciated. And no, this project can't, at the present time, upgrade from the perl version to the ruby version.

Thanks.

Mike