Service May Return Today

The Columbia UNIX and E-mail Systems group said it hopes to resolve CubMail problems by today after an e-mail server was overloaded and users were unable to save their account preferences or use their address book last week.

At approximately 10 a.m. on Jan. 17, the database server responsible for storing both e-mail preferences and address books failed in keeping up with user demands. Due to the server overload, CubMail users found their sessions prematurely timed out, rendering Cubmail "unusable," Melissa Metz, Director of UNIX and E-mail Systems, stated in an e-mail.

UNIX and E-mail Systems temporarily disabled preferences and the address book to alleviate the problem.

"On Thursday, we re-configured CubMail to reduce its use of the database ... but the number of requests was still more than the database server could handle," Metz wrote. "We made additional changes and tried again on Monday at 8:30 a.m., but it still didn't work."

The group then chose to transfer the entire e-mail database to a bigger server. Metz said the group plans to complete the server transfer by today, keeping all information within preferences and the address book intact.

The influx of activity that brought down CubMail arose from a surge in users, Metz stated. In December 2004, there were 41,000 users compared to about 51,000 last December-nearly a 25 percent increase in just two years. Of these users, 73 percent use only CubMail for their university e-mails.

Some students never use CubMail. "Other e-mail services provide more space and accessibility," said Tadi Ciscak, SEAS '08, who forwards everything to his Gmail account. Others, like Austin Brauser, SEAS '10, frustrated by CubMail's recent problems, have converted to other e-mail services for the interim.

"We are committed to restoring CubMail's full feature set and are making plans for further improvements over the next year," Metz added.