The BlitzMail server known as Vixen shut down Saturday night, leaving a large portion of the student body without BlitzMail for nearly 20 hours. After it was repaired, it again crashed briefly late last night.
According to Mehmet Iyigun '01, a student worker in Kiewit Computation Center's machine room, there was "an operating systems failure or something" during the routine backup of the server Saturday night.
BlitzMail servers are backed up every night between 3 and 4 a.m. by recording the sent and received messages onto magnetic tape. These tapes are used to store the information in case of a serious system malfunction. While a server is being backed up, account holders cannot access their accounts.
Iyigun said the server was restored at approximately 7 p.m. yesterday evening. About half an hour later, all the messages that had been sent to Vixen accounts during the shutdown were accessible to the students.
At about 12:30 this morning, the server crashed again. Machine Room officials were unavailable for comment after the second malfunction.
The Vixen server is one of the six such servers handling the College's e-mail accounts. The servers are named for Santa Claus's reindeer, including Blitzen, Dancer, Dasher and Donner.
"It wasn't too big of a problem for me," said Albert Lee '01, one of the students who was without BlitzMail yesterday. "It wasn't a big issue. In fact, it was kind of helpful since I didn't procrastinate by Blitzing people."
