The one-and-a-half-hour KeyServer shut-down at Kiewit Wednesday night prevented Microsoft Excel access for several hours, creating difficulties for students requiring the software for midterms and projects.
This is the first time in eight years when a significant number of students has been affected by a KeyServer malfunction, according to Denis Devlin, the adjunct faculty member who wrote the KeyServer program.
Some students who use the KeyServer programs for class had difficulties.
"I had a lot of problems," Nelly Banerjee '00 said.
Banerjee said his economics project and computer science midterms both required the use of KeyServer programs.
"Nothing at Kiewit was working," he said.
The Excel software was running again yesterday morning, but the Code Warrior program Banerjee needed for his programming midterm was still not functioning, he said.
Devlin, who wrote the KeyServer program, said the problem was due to a system software failure.
"Users should make sure that they have the latest KeyClient access," Devlin said. According to Devlin, students with the most recent version of the KeyServer did not even notice there was a problem.
The new software automatically searches for a "shadow" server when the main server is down, bypassing malfunctions of the main server entirely.
Students can get the new version of KeyServer from the Core Dartmouth Software folder on Public.
