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Twice on Friday, March 19, and once on Saturday, March 20, the Machine Room
in Berry lost power. The Machine Room houses Dartmouth's central computer
systems, including the BlitzMail servers. The uninterruptible power
supply to these systems failed, so the computers suddenly stopped in the middle
of processing. This has caused significant problems in many people's e-mail
accounts. Some of the problems that users have experienced include:
- Lost messages.
- Messages that weren't delivered.
- All messages appearing in the In Box as unread.
- The "Reply To" field being set to someone else's name.
- Spam filtering settings disappearing, etc.
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. However, we have already taken steps to improve the
BlitzMail server software to prevent any future power outages from
causing this problem again. We are also working to resolve the issues with the
power supply.
Troubleshooting
Each individual who has a Dartmouth e-mail account will need to follow the
steps below to fix their own account(s). If you have questions about any of
these steps, please do not hesitate to contact the Computing Help Desk at
646-2999 or your department's
computing support office.
- All users should check all of their BlitzMail preferences. This is
done within BlitzMail by selecting BlitzMail from the
Menu bar, then selecting Preferences. Make
sure all of the fields on all of the tabs are set the way you want them.
- If you need to reset your Spam filtering preferences, see SpamAssassin.
- All users should check the expiration dates on folders to make sure that
messages are not being deleted prior to when you anticipate them going away. To
do this, click the Filing Cabinet icon in your BlitzMail
Tool bar. Click once on each folder, then click the
Expiration button. Set the date to your preference.
- If you sent a message(s) just prior to this power outage, you should go to
your Sent Messages folder, find the message(s) and resend it. Additionally,
some users have had their sent messages appear in their In Box. If your Sent
Messages folder is empty, look in your In box for the messages.
- If you have messages appearing in your In Box that should not be there, you
will need to manually move them into the correct folders or delete them.
- Many users have received a "Welcome to Dartmouth" message in their In Box.
This is due to the server problems. The message can be deleted.
- Some users have lost messages that were received within the few hours prior
to the power problems. Since the BlitzMail servers are only backed up
each night, messages received after the backups occurred that are no longer in
your account cannot be recovered. In these instances, you will need to contact
the person who sent the message and ask them to resend it to you.
- For those who are forwarding their Dartmouth e-mail to another
BlitzMail account (e.g., DHMC, ValleyNet, etc.), you should log into
your Dartmouth.edu account to verify the preferences. The
settings for the accounts are different for each site. The settings for your
BlitzMail account may appear correct when you are logged in from
another site; however, those preferences do not reflect the settings from your
Dartmouth.edu account.
If you are experiencing symptoms other than those listed above, please
contact the Computing Help Desk at 646-2999 or your department's computing support office for information on how to
proceed.
We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding while these issues are
being resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience this outage has caused.
For more information related to this topic, see:
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