Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

U-M E-mail Undergoes Overhaul, Bugs Remain

22. August 2004 • Matt Hollerbach
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As ArborUpdate reported earlier this summer, a major upgrade of the “umich.edu” e-mail servers took place over the weekend. This change encompassed not only the software which receives, sorts, and sends e-mail, but also the physical servers which host the massive system.

At 10:00 pm on Friday, August 20, e-mail access by web, telnet, and 3rd party programs was suspended to facilitate this change. According to ITCS, the change was to have been completed by 6:00 am the following morning. However, due to unforseen technical problems, the new system was not put online until shortly before 9:00 pm Saturday, and there are still many inaccessible features.

As of right now, users can only access their inbox via the web interface at mail.umich.edu; other folders and 3rd party program access are still unavailable at this time.

The U-M Information Technology Central Services department (ITCS) has set up a news page to update users on the progress of the upgrade. Stay tuned here for more info.

> U-M People: (try to) check your mail here

From ITCS:
> Bigger Mailboxes, Bigger Home Directories, and More Coming this Fall
> E-Mail Upgrade Finished; Residual Problems Remain
> E-Mail Configuration Changes Required by August 2004 E-Mail Upgrade
> 4-HELP Open Extra Hours this Weekend to Help with E-Mail Upgrades and Reconfigurations
> Monitoring Page for ITD System Outages
> Technical Details on E-mail Server Upgrades



  1. Here’s an update from Gavin Eadie, head of UMCE:

    “The ITCS e-mail server upgrade is complete. Technical staff continue to work on optimizing email delivery, resolving some email client issues, and restoring a few mail folders.

    Webmail (http://mail.umich.edu) is working, with access to all folders. Because there are so many people now logging on to Webmail, authentication may be slow. If you are unable to login, try clearing thetry browser’s cache, removing cookies from your browser, and restarting the browser. Some users have reported that these measures improve log-in performance.

    Pine is working for reading e-mail in all folders, but users are unable to send email. This problem will be resolved this evening.

    POP clients (Eudora, Outlook) are working; users may see their INBOX messages duplicated, depending on whether or not they deleted messages from the server prior to the upgrade.

    IMAP clients (Eudora, Outlook, Mulberry 3.1.5, and Apple’s Mail application) are working, with access to all folders. Some users still need to upgrade their software or change their client software configurations. See E-Mail Configuration Changes Required by August 2004 E-Mail Upgrade (S4321).

    If you need assistance, the ITCS consultants will be available tomorrow (Monday), 8:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. They can be reached at 734-764-HELP or online.consulting@umich.edu.”
       —Andrew Mortensen    Aug. 22 '04 - 08:31PM    #