Some students who checked BlitzMail over interim were unpleasantly surprised by a wide range of problems resulting from server power failures March 19 and 20. Common problems included lost messages, sent messages not being delivered and all messages in the inbox appearing as unread. Some students also found their "Reply To" field set to other BlitzMail users' names.
The problems were a result of three power failures in Baker-Berry Library's Machine Room the Friday and Saturday after Winter term finals. When the "uninterruptable" power supply unit that is supposed to keep the servers running failed, the servers "came down cold," Director of Computing Services Robert Johnson said.
"The machines don't like to come down cold," Johnson said. "When it is not an orderly shutdown, sometimes data can be corrupted."
Lawrence Levine of Computing Services sent out a campus-wide e-mail Monday, March 23 notifying the student body of the potential problems with the BlitzMail system.
"Unfortunately, due to the nature of the failure, there is nothing that Computing Services can do to fix the corruption that occurred to everyone's e-mail accounts," the BlitzMail message read.
"However, we have already taken steps to improve the BlitzMail server software to prevent future power outages from causing this problem again."
The e-mail instructed all users to check the settings in their BlitzMail preferences, which may have been altered due to the crash.
Computer Services warns that users may also need to reset their spam-filtering settings and the expiration dates on their folders and resend messages sent just prior to the power outage that could have been lost in the server.
According to Johnson, students who were logged into their BlitzMail account at the time of the power outages suffered the most serious problems, including the loss of messages.
"All my sent messages went to my inbox. I was very distraught," Mike Reeves '05 said.
The crash of the BlitzMail servers only adds to the list of recent problems Computing Services has had with the network.
The week before Winter term finals the Internet border router went down, preventing all campus computers from going online.
That router was replaced over break, according to Johnson, which should not only prevent future crashes, but should actually improve Internet performance.
