INFORMATION SERVICES
APRIL 2003
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Announcements from the Bulletin, Today, Notification-L
04/25/03, E-Mail Difficulties: An Overview
The College's electronic mail system stopped working at
approximately 5:00 PM Thursday, April 24; the Admin server and printing
services were also affected. Network staff responded immediately to
diagnose the problem. Admin access and printing was restored by
approximately 10:00 PM. An explanatory message was mounted on the
Help Desk's phone line, x.6525.
E-mail remained nonfunctional, and as of 8:00 AM Friday, April 25, we
began to communicate this to the community, using the CIT Web pages,
LESTER and targeted broadcast voicemails. The problem was traced to
database corruption, which is an error within the software that runs the
mail system. It was necessary for our network staff to work with the
software vendor to fix the problem. As of 11:15 AM, e-mail was again
functioning normally, and this was also communicated through the same
venues.
Messages that were sent to Macalester addresses during the downtime
could not be received. The senders' servers instead were notified as
the messages "bounced back." Many of these servers continued to attempt
delivery at preset intervals. As soon as Macalester's mail server came
back online, delivery of these messages to their intended recipients
began. No messages were lost during the outage, but some bounced
messages may not have been redelivered - this depends entirely on the
sending servers and how they are administered.
It should be understood that Mulberry had nothing to do with this
outage, nor with other e-mail difficulties over the past couple of
weeks. The problems can all be traced back to the actual mail server
and PMDF, the mail-processing software that runs on it. Our Network staff
are continuing to investigate alternative ways to make critical e-mail
services more dependable and less problematic.
We regret the inconvenience these problems cause our community. We
will continue to seek the best solution for handling campus e-mail
services. [Notification-L]
04/25/03, New Look for Events
Calendar
The Web events calendar has a new look and a new
easy-to-remember URL: events.macalester.edu. The
calendar features two small calendars in the left column for easy
navigation to a particular day, event display in the center column, and
links in the right column for switching from "All Events" to a
particular category of events such as Alumni events or Student
Organization events. Also new is an event submission form (look for the
"Submit an Event" link at the top of the
right column) and a search function. [Bulletin]
04/25/03, LESTER Tip #16: Link to Favorite Library Indexes
LESTER is Macalester's Web portal, providing a convenient and personalized
way to access a wide variety of campus and Web resources. Use your regular
network/e-mail username and password to log in to LESTER at
http://lester.macalester.edu.
LESTER's Research tab includes a "Library Indexes" channel with links to
many online indexes. Indexes are used to find articles (and sometimes
books and other materials) on a particular topic. The drop down "Display
these library indexes" menu allows you to view indexes by discipline area.
The "My Favorites" menu option shows links to Library Indexes you have
designated as "Favorite" resources. To add a link to My Favorites, click
the empty box that appears just before the index name. A green check mark
indicates the link has been added to My Favorites.
[Bulletin]
04/25/03, Students In The
Summer
Accounts of graduated students, both e-mail and files
in personal folders, will be closed on June 1, as in previous years. If
faculty members are sponsoring students over the summer, please remind
them to call the Help Desk at 6525 with a request to keep accounts open.
Likewise, student voicemail boxes for those remaining on campus will be
relocated to new rooms beginning May 19. Students who want their
voicemail to stay active this summer should contact Telecommunications
at 6566. [Bulletin]
04/25/03, Media Services
Closed
Media Services will be closed for 2 hours on
Thursday, May 1, from 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM. [Bulletin]
04/25/03, Backup Plan
At least two
circumstances at this time of year should cause you to consider backing
up your data. Those anticipating delivery of a new computer should copy
data to removable media, such as CDs, or to their network file server
account. Second, faculty members should remember that data in course
folders goes away at the end of the semester and should preserve it at
another location, if necessary. Of course, backing up your data is
always a good thing and eventually will save you much tribulation.
[Bulletin]
04/24/03, E-Mail Forwarding Clarification!
[Editor's note: the Notification-L message below, of 4/24
about forwarding, was widely misunderstood.] The kind of forwarding when
you have an e-mail that you want to share with someone else, so you click
the 'forward' button, was NOT affected.
The kind of forwarding I referred to earlier is where someone had all
of their Macalester e-mail forwarded to a different address
automatically, by the server. Often someone studying or working at
another place for an extended period of time will just have all their
mail forwarded there. That was broken, but fixed again. That e-mail
will have just been delivered to the person's Macalester e-mail account
normally. [Notification-L]
04/24/03, Admin and E-Mail Servers
This morning, a problem on the Admin server caused it to fail three
times, with a 15-60 minute interval between failures. The Admin server
controls e-mail and Web authentication, as well as printing, so those services
were also affected.
There were three 3-4 minute outages earlier in the morning (when the
Admin server rebooted itself), and a 20-minute outage around 11:30 AM.
while we made attempts to fix the problem.
[Notification-L]
04/24/03, E-Mail Forwarding Was Broken, Now
Fixed
A recent update to our e-mail server went quickly and
flawlessly - almost. The e-mail server database which handles forwarding
was corrupted. Most forwarding of e-mail did not work. The problem has
been fixed, and e-mail forwarding is working again. [Notification-L]
04/10/03, Mail Server Outage on Thursday, April
10, around 1:30 PM
The mail server outage today, 10 April 2003, was caused by a disk volume
on the mail server quickly and unexpectedly filling up. Unable to write
to this volume, the mail server could not function properly. The mail
server was down for about 25 minutes beginning at about 1:30 PM.
[Notification-L]
04/10/03, Manage Your E-Mail
Large e-mail Inboxes are a big factor in causing our e-mail server to
slow down. The mail server loads the entire Inbox everytime someone
logs in to e-mail, and large Inboxes take longer to load and use more
system memory, slowing down system performance for everybody. Please
move messages you want to keep to another folder that isn't opened up
automatically every time you log in. The messages will still be
available, and e-mail will be much quicker for you. If you have
Mulberry configured to automatically save a copy of every message you
send, please review those messages and purge them periodically also.
Every time you send a message, the server needs to access that folder,
and large folders are slower to access. [Bulletin]
04/10/03, Meet the Candidate
The Freeman Foundation supports our hiring an East Asian Studies
Librarian. Our first candidate will visit campus on Wednesday, April 16.
If you would like to meet and talk with the candidate, you have two
opportunities. At 1:30 to 2:30 PM, the candidate will present a paper in
the Bibliographic Instruction Room on Level 2 of the library. There
will be ample time to ask questions and talk during this hour. There
will also be an open reception from 4:30 to 5:15 PM in the Center for
Scholarship and Teaching. We invite all interested faculty and staff to
attend one or both of these open events. [Bulletin]
04/10/03, Seeing Double
To conserve paper, new workgroup printers are capable of printing on
both sides of each page (a.k.a. 'duplexing'). Please use the feature! How to do it often
depends on the particular application being used and the Help Desk at
x6525 would be glad to offer advice. [Bulletin]
04/10/03, A Mulberry Meeting
To learn about the new version of Mulberry (version 3), plan to attend
the April 24 drop-in session at 10:00 AM in Humanities 302. No
registration is necessary. Windows users can install the upgraded client
from their "Novell application launcher." Macintosh users and users at
home should go to http://www.macalester.edu/cit/services/software/index.htm#Mulberry.
[Bulletin]
04/10/03, Replying to a Voice Message - Or Not
Don't forget to press # when you are finished recording that reply! You
can reply to messages left in your voice mail, provided the call was
left by someone with a Macalester voice mail box; just press 8 after
listening to the message. However, the voice mail system does not
always tell you that you must press the # key after recording your
reply. After you press 8 to reply, record your reply, and press # to
"send" the reply. The voice mail system will then ask you if you want to
delete or save the original message. If you simply hang up after
recording your reply (and don't press #), your reply is negated.
If your voice mail box does not tell you to press # after recording your
reply, and you'd like it to, please call Telecommunications at x6566 for
further instruction. [Bulletin]
04/08/03
Mulberry 3 released. The
new version has a 3-pane view, rules and filters, and spell-as-you-type.
Windows users on-campus may just double-click the new Mulberry icon in
their Novell Application Launcher (NAL). Macintosh users may download
Mulberry 3 at: http://www.macalester.edu/cit/services/software/index.htm#Mulberry.
[Today]
04/08/03
Passwords are like
underwear - change them often, according to a U of MI poster campaign.
We're making it easier for you to change your password by enabling you
to choose a new password through a Web page at http://mail.macalester.edu/.
[Today]
04/08/03
The Recording Industry Associateion of America just sued students at
Princeton, RPI, and MI Tech because they were sharing illegally copied
music within the campus network. Each was being sued for $150,000
per song. See http://chronicle.com. Ask for permission
to copy, pay for it or delete it! [Today]
04/04/03, Be Careful Out There
Some computers recently were stolen from an academic lab on campus.
Please help establish a secure environment by checking on your computer
clusters, locking unneeded doors when supervision is not present,
securing public access computers (the stolen ones were cabled down, but
even so, we should not make it easy), and hiring monitors.
[Bulletin]
04/04/03, Mulberry 3 Released
Mulberry 3 for Windows and Macintosh is now available to all Macalester
staff, faculty and students. The new version of Mulberry has three main
new features: a 3-pane view, rules and filters, and spell-as-you-type.
Windows users on-campus may just doubleclick the new Mulberry icon in
their Novell Application Launcher (NAL) to install and run the new
Mulberry. All Macintosh users and home users may download and install
Mulberry 3 from www.macalester.edu/cit/services/software/index.htm#Mulberry.
[Bulletin]
04/04/03, Mulberry 3 Explained
If you missed the demo sessions last month on the new version of the
Mulberry e-mail client, plan to attend the session at 10:00 AM Thursday,
April 24, in Humanities 302. No registration is necessary.
[Bulletin]
04/04/03, LESTER Tip #15: Move LESTER Channels Up and Down
LESTER is Macalester's Web portal, providing a convenient and
personalized way to access a wide variety of campus and Web resources.
Use your regular network and e-mail username and password to log in to
LESTER at http://lester.macalester.edu.
Many of the information "channels" in LESTER can be moved up and down on
the page. By adjusting the channel positions, you can move the
information that is most useful to you to the top of the page. Each
channel has a title bar with the channel title in boldface type. To the
right of the channel title, up and down arrowheads appear for channels
that can be moved. Simply click the arrowhead to move the channel up or
down on the page. LESTER remembers your preferences the next time you
log in. [Bulletin]
04/04/03, Passwords Are Like Toothbrushes
Change them often, according to a University of Michigan poster
campaign.
We're making it easier for you to change your password by enabling you
to choose a new password through a Web page at
http://mail.macalester.edu/.
A single password is used for logging on to the network, e-mail and
Corporate Time, so this will change the password for all of those
services.
(For Windows XP users: when you reboot your PC and log into Novell with
your new password, you will get a second log-in page for logging into
Windows. If your Windows account has the same name as your Novell
account, log-in with your OLD password and check the box in the lower
left corner of the page which will set your Windows password to match
your Novell password.)
Some tips for choosing a good password are:
04/04/03, National Library Week
Please join us in celebrating National Library Week, April 6-12. Special
events during the week include:
04/04/03, Information Services Orientation Rescheduled
The next Information Services (Library, CIT, Media Services) orientation
will take place from 9:00 to 11:30 AM Thursday, April 17. All staff hired
within the past year will be receiving invitations and are encouraged to
attend. The session is open to other staff as well. If you are
interested, or would like more information, please contact Dave Collins
at x6347 or collins@macalester.edu.
[Bulletin]
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