Problems plague mail.sas system

The upgrade of the School of Arts and Sciences computer system was supposed to solve a lot of problems. But for many, it has created as many troubles as it sought to eliminate. Since the upgrade of mail.sas, two machines accommodate users instead of one. Although the new set-up has solved problems of system overload, new troubles have arisen because of the dual machines. "My friends say that they can't 'finger' me to see if I'm on and can't 'talk' to me," College sophomore Josephine Shih said. "I hope they get it fixed." Officials charged with overhauling the system said some problems were expected as a result of the changes. "Changing the machines required changing the operating system," said John Yates, director of Information Systems and Operations for SAS. "We knew it would take time to convert all the functions that many of our users depend on now." One of the most noticeable problems involves the 'finger' command. When phone-in users attempt to find out who is on the system, they sometimes only see who is on the same machine they are on. To contact someone else on mail.sas, users now must know if that person is on mail.sas1 or mail.sas2. Like the College, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences upgraded its computer system, eniac.seas, to two separate machines several weeks ago. But the two machines were named red.seas and blue.seas respectively to prevent the kind of confusion that has resulted on mail.sas. Another of the most frequent complaints, according to Yates, is trouble with the 'talk' function. In the past, mail.sas users could run either of two separate programs -- ntalk or talk -- to try to chat with someone logged in on a different machine. "'Talk' in Solarias [the new system] has a problem," Yates said. "That's one of the things we'll be working on in the next few days. I think we can work around it, we just haven't had time to do it yet." Because of these problems with mail.sas, the SAS computing help desk has received dozens of calls and e-mail from students with difficulties. "We have a small staff and adding more people would be like having too many chefs in the kitchen," Yates said. "People would be tripping on each other trying to help." Yates recommended that students having problems should wait a few days for the bugs in the system to be worked out. Most of the problems were not worked out before the system was installed due to the delay of the new equipment, according to Yates. The Sun computers that now make up mail.sas were supposed to be delivered in early spring, but did not arrive at the University until last week. "There's a lot of software they apparently still have to install," College junior Katie McCann said. "There are a lot of problems with 'talk' and downloading things. They should get it working, it's just annoying until they get it working."