My first place to look was in the mail logs for the SMTP server and other associated daemons. However, I saw nothing in the maillogs which was not a very comforting thought.

After more investigation I would notice empty files like this every once in awhile…

~/Maildir)  ls -la new/
total 4
drwx------   2 al  al   512 Jun  8 00:25 .
drwx------  69 al  al  2048 Jun  8 00:25 ..
-rw-------   1 al  al     0 Jun  8 00:22 1244388142.30600_.myserver.net

This gave me more clues on where to look next. So next I looked in my Procmail logs for this particular mail id and noticed the process handling this message was killed by SIGPIPE

procmail: Executing "/usr/local/bin/spamassassin"
[84028] warn: spamassassin: killed by SIGPIPE
procmail: [84026] Tue Apr 14 21:45:26 2009

Googling dug up the following links that explain it all:

 http://www.nabble.com/Zero-exit-code-aft…
 https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/s…

Verdict:
Upgrade Spamassassin

Since I have upgraded Spamassassin, the zero byte email mystery has resolved itself.

However, one issue that cropped up during an IRB session was I could not copy and paste Japanese characters into the IRB repl. This is very very painful for my day to day use with Ruby (Imagine not being able to use the ‘|’ character while writing UNIX pipelines).

Below is an example of me trying to enter the character あ into IRB and watching it fail.

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> ab = "?"    <---- Tried entering the character あ
SyntaxError: (irb):1: invalid multibyte char (UTF-8)
(irb):1: unterminated string meets end of file
from /usr/local/bin/irb19:12:in `'

After a lot of head scritching I was able to narrow it down to something with readline:

$ irb --noreadline
irb(main):002:0> ab = "あ"
=> "あ"
irb(main):003:0>

After some more digging into the issue. The root cause seems to be the lack of GNU readline. By default, Ruby will link in the system installed readline library on OS X which is called editline [4]. Unfortunately, editline does not support UTF8 or multi-byte character sets which makes this a no-go for daily usage.

Most of the other references suggest downloading readline from source and installing into /usr/local however I believe this defeats the purpose of using something like MacPorts. After a bit of finagling I found that this is the invocation to get things working.

wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/rub...
tar xvzf ruby-1.9.1-p243.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.1-p243
# Don't trust MacPorts version of autoconf because it somehow nuked the
# --with-readline-dir option
/usr/bin/autoconf
./configure --with-readline-dir=/opt/local --enable-shared --program-suffix=19 --enable-pthread
make
sudo make install

I have it wrapped up in a script which you can see here.

References

[1] http://wonko.com/post/how-to-compile-rub…
[2] http://frozenplague.net/2009/01/ruby-191…
[3] http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/
[4] http://thrysoee.dk/editline/

The Capify.org website helps for remembering the ’simple’ details on what Capistrano can do. But where I waste a lot of my time is asking questions like, “How do I set the Capistano SSH gateway to a non-standard port?”. Luckily, Capistrano is written in Ruby so it is easy enough to glance through the code and finally find out where it is but this is why good tech docs exist. To give enough context to answer those questions.

To answer my own question, below is a snippet you can add to your capfile to use a non-standard port if you need to deploy through a SSH gateway that lives on a non-standard port

# Add this to your Capfile
# This sets the SSH gateway to a machine called mysshgateway.com on port 22222
set :gateway, ‘mysshgateway.com:22222′

Edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and make sure that the line that begins with

hosts:

contains the following

hosts: files dns mdns

Then you should be able to ping any machine that uses Bonjour. For example, if you have a Mac that is named mycoolmac then you should be able to ping mycoolmac.local

References

• Heads-up Multicast DNS and discovery

To insert the current filename. In Insert Mode, type CTRL-r % and it will insert the current filename.

Thanks to blog post for the tip!

1. Shutdown computer
2. Swap around hardware components
3. Restart
4. Life is good

However any techie should tell you this is a pipe dream on Windows. Mac users probably have no clue since they never change hardware components and just buy new Macs to solve their problems. Which leaves the lucky OSS *nix variants to try stunts like this.

Being the stubborn person I am, I attempted this with OpenSolaris by swapping out my motherboard. I wanted to do this in order to take advantage of the E7400 Core 2 Duo that I bought awhile back. Things almost worked however on reboot I was given the dreaded console login screen with a useless keyboard. The following as far as I know don´t work…

1. CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
2. CTRL-ALT-Fn
3. CTRL-ALT-DEL

Your best bet is to ssh somehow and try to look for clues. Here is what I did…

1. Swap motherboard and stare at dark screen
2. Find out how to boot into single user mode and make sure the kernel isn’t PO-ed or something and find my IP address
3. Move away the X11 configuration that I configured (dual-display) and try rebooting
4. Reboot and find out it isn’t working
5. ssh in and realize it still isn’t working. Move the old dual display X11 config back to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
6. Try restarting gdm with svcadm restart gdm and watch it fail
7. Scritch head some more
8. Try starting X from the SSH session and whoah it works
9. Restart gdm (svcadm restart gdm) and now I get a login screen
10. Realize that I disconnected the left monitor (VGA) to help debug and want it back
11. Logout and log back in. I now have dual screens and a working Solaris install again!

References

• How to boot into Single User Mode for OpenSolaris
• Finding device faults with Fault Manager
• Debugging problems with nvidia driver on bootup

sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

However when I did, I ran into some icons from packages kdepim-3.5.9 and kdegraphics-4.1.0 conflicting with packages crystalsvg-icon-theme and libkipi. Here is a log…

  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps/kpalmdoc.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_contacts.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_date.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_journal.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_mail.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_news.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_notes.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_summary.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_summary_green.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_todo.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/rss_tag.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386

Error Summary
-------------

I tried deleting these packages manually but that led into an even deeper’s rats nest of dependency hell. So one thing I tried was

$ sudo yum groupremove "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"
$ sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupinstall  "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

However I still got conflcts so ran

$ sudo yum remove libkipi
$ sudo yum remove crystalsvg-icon-theme
$ sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate  "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

And finally I have got KDE 4.1.0 to install in way too many steps.

$ svn co http://svn.somewhere.com/svn/projects
svn: Unrecognized format for the relative external URL ”.

Wonderful. This indicated to me there was a problem with the svn externals somewhere. After noodling a little I decided to Google around and found this. Basically, duplicate listings in your svn:externals is a bad thing.

Read more

One that I am used to on Debian/Ubuntu-based distros is called rename which is one that is derived from the Perl Cookbook. However, note that this rename script does not seem to exist on other UNIX variants in a packaged format. It definitely does not seem to exist on a Fedora Core 9 box I use nor does it exist on a FreeBSD machine.

While it would not be too hard to swipe the perl script and copy it in place onto a system. I hate having to remember moving that script around and around with me from place to place so I looked around for other equivalents and found one called mmv. One nice thing is that there are packages for at least FreeBSD, FC9, and Debian/Ubuntu variants so it should be quite lazy to install compared to rename.

Below I give an example of using it to do a multiple renaming where I want to append the value 1 to the end of a bunch of filenames.

$ ls
cat_100  cat_15  cat_200  cat_50  cat_500

$ mmv cat"*" cat#1_1
$ ls
cat_100_1  cat_15_1  cat_200_1  cat_500_1  cat_50_1

However, the non-fun time comes when one wants to restore a subversion repository that has way too many dumpfiles parts. The instructions for restoration are basically ‘roll your own’ if you want to try to automate the restore procedure. What would be nicer is if there was the converse tool that made it easier to not have to figure out how to re-order the backup files in the proper manner in order to perform the restore.

I spent a few minutes thinking about it and wrote a small Ruby script to help with this that I call svnbackup-restore.rb. Here is the (hastily written) source code. (Download here)

#!/usr/bin/ruby
# Program Name: Restore the restore
# Purpose:      Take all the svn dumpfiles generated from svnbackup
#               sort them and try loading them via svnadmin
# Usage:        1. Create the new repo path with svnadmin create
#               2. Set repo_name to the repo backup file names
#               3. Set restore_path to the new path to restore to
#               4. Run it ./svnbackup-restore.rb
# Assumptions:  svnrestore-backup.rb is in the same dir as the svn dump files

# CHANGE PARAMETERS HERE
repo_name = 'myrepo'
restore_path = '/path/to/myrepo'

# Print out debugging?
DEBUG = true

# DON'T CHANGE BELOW

# Filename format is 'dumpfile---.bzip2'
svn_dumpfiles = Dir["dumpfile-#{repo_name}*.bzip2"]
sorted_files = svn_dumpfiles.sort do |a, b|
  left_rev = a.split('-')[2].to_i
  right_rev = b.split('-')[2].to_i
  left_rev  right_rev
end
sorted_files.each do |dump_part|
  results = `bzcat #{dump_part} | svnadmin load #{restore_path}; echo $?`
  puts results if DEBUG
  res = results.split.last.to_i
  if res != 0
    puts "Error on trying to load up #{dump_part}!"
    exit 1
  end
end

However, it seems due to some reason or another I lost the ability to install extensions. After Googling around I dug up a nice hint on Ubuntu’s Launchpad site.

Basically delete the file named extensions.rdf in your Mozilla directory

• Windows: C:\Documents And Settings\[Username]\Application Data\Mozilla Firefox\
• Linux (Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 7.10): $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/profile/MY_PROFILE/

Read the Ubuntu fix

nice find /tmp/ -name 'ruby_sess.*' | xargs -n 100 rm -fv

However, the problem is that this causes insanity on IO which is NOT good for a running service. (Luckily this service was merely important instead of critical) So, I present to you my quick and dirty script that will clean up all those nefarious ruby sessions files that have run amok for months.

while true; do
    nice find /tmp/ -name 'ruby_sess.*' | head -n 20 | xargs rm -fv; sleep 10
done

That’s odd, I’ve never heard of Safari having launch problems before. I check the log and I see something like the following:

Date/Time:      2008-04-14 22:06:45.474 +0900
OS Version:     10.4.11 (Build 8S165)
Report Version: 4

Command: Safari
Path:    /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
Parent:  WindowServer [86]

Version: 3.1 (4525.13)

PID:    20987
Thread: Unknown

Link (dyld) error:

Symbol not found: _WebDatabaseDirectoryDefaultsKey
  Referenced from: /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
  Expected in: /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/WebKit

Those type of messages go on and on in Console.app. My first round of Googling brought me to a Macrumors thread that recommended deleting the history.plist and other parts from ~/Library/Safari. I tried removing various files from that directory to no effect and finally just removing the directory altogether. Nada.

Troubleshooting a PC WITHOUT a web browser really sucks. I suggest everyone try it once in awhile to see just how much the nature of debugging IT problems has changed when you are deprived of a very powerful tool. Luckily, this Mac had a very crufty version of IE lurking so the first thing I tried was a download of Firefox. However, the disk image refused to be mounted! Seems this is also tied in with the security update. So basically, I’m left with using IE as my main tool for debugging on this Mac.

After a bit of googling, it seems that the fix is tied requiring the latest OS X security update (Available at the Support Download page). For OS X 10.4.x users you can find a link to the latest Universal here.

However, there is a catch. The security update is only available from that page as a Disk Image. Guess what you can’t open it up under the affected Mac. At this point you’re left with 2 options:

1. Burn the Disk Image to a CD-R/DVD-R and use it that way
2. Transfer the disk image to another Mac and unarchive it then push it back

I decided on the latter option since I hate wasting a CD-R if I don’t have to. After applying the Security Update and rebooting, Safari boots up and things seem chipper again but that was a serious side trip on something I’ve rarely seen Apple ever mess up. Anti-kudos to Apple for making this update on your ‘legacy’ OS really sucky.

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
     LC_ALL = "En_US",
     LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

With a quick Google search I found an answer in this Rubify post. Basically the solution / fix is to make sure the following is set in either your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc or ~/.cshrc

# This setting is for the new UTF-8 terminal support
export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

Read more at Rubify!

A new data center in Switzerland is being used to heat a nearby swimming pool. In what appears to be a first, the town pool in Uitikon, Switzerland will be heated by waste heat from a data center

Read more at Datacenter Knowledge

$ sudo port install icu erlang
... ICU installs without a problem ...
--->  Fetching tcl
--->  Attempting to fetch tcl8.5.1-src.tar.gz from http://downloads.sourceforge.net/tcl
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for tcl
--->  Extracting tcl
--->  Configuring tcl
--->  Building tcl with target all
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix" && make all " returned error 2
Command output: /usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -c -Os -O2 -pipe    -Wall -Wno-implicit-int -fno-common -I. -I/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix -I/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../generic -I/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../libtommath -DPACKAGE_NAME=\"tcl\" -
...
...
...
_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c
In file included from /opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:62:
/usr/local/include/mach-o/arch.h:35: error: nested redefinition of 'enum NXByteOrder'
/usr/local/include/mach-o/arch.h:35: error: redeclaration of 'enum NXByteOrder'
/usr/local/include/mach-o/arch.h:36: error: redeclaration of enumerator 'NX_UnknownByteOrder'
/usr/include/architecture/byte_order.h:137: error: previous definition of 'NX_UnknownByteOrder' was here
/usr/local/include/mach-o/arch.h:37: error: redeclaration of enumerator 'NX_LittleEndian'
/usr/include/architecture/byte_order.h:138: error: previous definition of 'NX_LittleEndian' was here
/usr/local/include/mach-o/arch.h:39: error: redeclaration of enumerator 'NX_BigEndian'
/usr/include/architecture/byte_order.h:140: error: previous definition of 'NX_BigEndian' was here
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c: In function 'TclpFindSymbol':
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:382: warning: 'NSLookupSymbolInImage' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:182)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:415: warning: 'NSLinkEditError' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:217)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:419: warning: 'NSLookupSymbolInModule' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:181)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:428: warning: 'NSAddressOfSymbol' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:188)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c: In function 'TclpUnloadFile':
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:493: warning: 'NSUnLinkModule' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:169)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c: In function 'TclpLoadMemory':
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:697: warning: 'NSCreateObjectFileImageFromMemory' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:146)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:730: warning: 'NSLinkModule' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:161)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:732: warning: 'NSDestroyObjectFileImage' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:147)
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_tcl/work/tcl8.5.1/unix/../unix/tclLoadDyld.c:740: warning: 'NSLinkEditError' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/mach-o/dyld.h:217)
make: *** [tclLoadDyld.o] Error 1

Error: The following dependencies failed to build: tk tcl
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

Pretty sucky, huh? My first lazy thought was, “I thought the point of a package manager was to avoid all these problems.”

After a little bit of thinking and staring at the error message, I did the workaround and moved the /usr/local/include directory away and tried rebuilding which made things much happier. Check the log below…

$ cd /usr/local
l$ ls
arm-apple-darwin	include			man
bin			info			share
docs			lib
etc			libexec
$ sudo mv include include.ignore
l$ sudo port install icu erlang
Skipping org.macports.activate (icu ) since this port is already active
--->  Cleaning icu
--->  Building tcl with target all
--->  Staging tcl into destroot
--->  Installing tcl 8.5.1_0
--->  Activating tcl 8.5.1_0

Voila. A working erlang install. Don’t forget to move back the include directory back to its old place.

Here’s what you’ll mostly likely run into…

# sudo fdisk /dev/sda
... Steps for adding disk  elided ...

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.

ahoang@jp-db-3:~$ sudo mke2fs -m 0 -j /dev/sda3
mke2fs 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
Could not stat /dev/sda3 --- No such file or directory

The device apparently does not exist; did you specify it correctly?

# ls -la /dev/sda*
/dev/sda   /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2

The simplest thing to do is just reboot and Linux will redetect everything on restart. However, sometimes you just can’t reboot. After Googling around it seems that partprobe does the job handily. Luckily this tool is already on an Ubuntu system so no need to apt-get install but it’s only a few keystrokes away.

Here’s the rest of the log once I ran partprobe and was humming along…

# sudo partprobe
# ls /dev/sda*
/dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2  /dev/sda3
# sudo mke2fs -m 0 -j /dev/sda3
mke2fs 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
... Creating a file system output elided ...

After doing some Googling around, it seems that the problem is tied with how rich desktop environments like KDE and Gnome manage the ‘desktop’. They normally override the traditional X11 root window with their own which means that sending output to rootwin won’t show anything.

However, luckily there are ways around this. One post on the mplayer list mentioned ways to disable background handling by GNOME and KDE. However I could not get this working under Gnome. After some more Googling around I found that Lifehacker had a hint on how to enable screensavers in the background. So using that information it was rather simple. The recipe for Ubuntu is:

# Tell GNOME to not handle the desktop
$ gconftool-2 –type bool –set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false
# Play a video file in the rootwin as fullscreen
$ mplayer -rootwin -fs my_cool_video.avi

The Bad

Annoying default partitioning scheme

I hate these laptops that advertise the hard drive size (40Gigs) then you get some weird partitioned scheme that you didn’t ask for
(with of course a few more gigs knocked off for a recovery partition). What this means is that you really only get 16GB or 19GB but not the full 40GB – (Win XP + Bundled Garbage) thanks to these partitions if you’re not willing to suck it up and reinstall the preinstalled OS

Slow

Yes it’s slow as a dog. This is one of those things that I wish you could test drive at the store by being allowed to install a stack of apps that you like and play around with it for a couple of hours. Once I loaded up an AntiVirus program, iTunes and Firefox life got pretty miserable trying to use iTunes and Firefox together. Also, the virus scan just slows the machine down each time I boot up Windows since it feels compelled to download updates and run full disk scans when I’m planning on using it. *sigh*

Keyboard tactile is awful

There have been other reviews on the keyboard not being that great and I’ve even came to the conclusion it wasn’t that great before I picked one up but decided to forge ahead anyways. After using it for a longer period of time I realize a crappy keyboard makes it very annoying to do anything requiring serious input on it without readjusting your brain how to type well on it.

Graphics drivers don’t support monitor mirroring

This is really bizarre and disappointing. I came up with a plan to try to use it as a cheap tablet by mirroring the output of the display to a larger monitor and drawing on the 7″ screen however the drivers for some inexplicable reason don’t have mirroring support which sucks. I spent some time trying to see if I could just use the touchscreen while outputting to an external monitor but it’s really disorienting. Even some SLIGHT visual feedback on the 7″ touchscreen itself would have been REALLY helpful.

The Good

Okay now that you’ve read some of my more outstanding gripes on the device. Here are some things that I considered nice about the Kohjinsha

Not a complete ripoff

The price point wasn’t that bad considering you do get lightweight tablet functionality

Standard components

The parts that most people will fiddle with are mostly standard laptop components instead of weird proprietary junk. The hard drive is a normal 2.5″ PATA drive which you can swap out if you try instructions like these (I just did). The memory is standard SO-DIMM instead of Micro DIMMs which saves a bit on price.

Portability

This thing is easy to toss into a bag and be mobile with it. I’ve even held it one handed while traveling on the train from Yokohama to Tokyo and that didn’t kill my arm (try that in a crowded train you 17″ notebook warriors)

Decent battery life

The battery life is around 3-4 hours with the usage that I do

Standby when the lid closes doesn’t suck

I’ve had so many variables with trying to get a Windows laptop to sleep when I close the lid compared to a Mac. I’m happy to say the Kohjinsha does the job without requiring a lot of fiddling with anything. Perhaps if I was a heavier power user on it I’d bork the drivers to prevent it but in my usage it worked which was a lifesaver when you’re trying to catch a train transfer.

Better than the rest of the PDAs at reading PDFs

The design of the Kohjinsha makes it a very good platform for reading stuff while on the move. I’ve tried a Zaurus, Palm, and a couple of other PDAs and reading novel or long textbook type of stuff was very painful due to screen resolution and slowness of the platform. I can say that the Kohjinsha makes a better eBook reader than these other solutions.

Luckily Well-Rounded documents the fix for this. You’ll have to upgrade portupgrade manually to rebuild its database with an updated version.