After the third Webmail crash in three days on Friday, School of Arts and Sciences technology officials say the problem may have finally been put to bed.
SAS Vice Dean for Finance and Administration Ramin Sedehi said that the technology department has fixed the root cause of the problem - faulty software patches - and that he does not anticipate more breakdowns occurring.
"I am confident that we have fixed what seems to be a very basic problem in the software package," he said.
And while Sedehi could not guarantee that there will not be additional problems in the future, he said the technology department is developing a detailed contingency plan - consisting of emergency servers equipped with basic functions - in the event of another crash.
As for Friday's breakdown - which lasted from early morning until about 9:10 p.m. - Sedehi said the system was down for such an extended period because he wanted to run diagnostics to find the root of the problem.
The crash "came 24 hours after we had just rebooted, and I just wasn't going to do the same thing," Sedehi said. "That wasn't going to do anybody any good, . so I wanted to figure out the problem and get it fixed."
What the school discovered was software patches, applied as part of an upgrade this summer, that were not working properly.
The patches had been applied at the discretion of the software's vendor, Sun Microsystems, Sedehi said.
He added that, though the problem was overlooked because it was such a basic flaw in the system, Sun told him that the school should have been instructed to use a different version from the start.
"They've always been a good, reliable partner, but this was unfortunate," he said. "This was something that they knew about, and . at any point they could have said to us, 'This might be wrong.'"
"We will definitely be having some conversations with Sun Microsystems about why they didn't more fully test the new [patches], and why they didn't tell us immediately when they discovered the problem," SAS Information Technology Director Ira Winston wrote in an e-mail.
Sedehi said the school is still looking to pick a company - either Microsoft or Google - to which to outsource Webmail by the start of the spring semester. He also hopes to have a plan for switching users to the new server - if they choose to do so - in place by the end of January.
The school is currently in legal talks with the two companies in an effort to develop the contract in a way that will protect student privacy, Sedehi said.
The delay in switching also comes from a need to hear students' opinions before choosing the new server, he added.
"The positive part of the students' input was that [we discovered that] either vendor would provide all of the features that they're looking for," he said.
