More than 32,000 WiscMail accounts have been and will continue to be inaccessible to individuals on Madison’s campus until Wednesday evening while the University of Wisconsin continues to rebuild the thousands of accounts.
“No mail has been lost,” Brian Rust, Division of Information Technology’s Communication Manager. “The files are being rebuilt. We are working on getting it remedied.”
Over the weekend one of UW’s three Mail Stores experienced a hardware failure, which has ultimately left thousands without access to what many say is the main communication device amongst peers as well as between students and faculty.
According to a DoIT update “the failure caused significant database corruption, which we (DoIT) began addressing immediately.”
The rebuilding of these accounts is expected to take approximately 50 hours with current plans resulting in a complete restoration by Wednesday night. The hardware has now been fixed and DoIT began rebuilding the database late Monday morning according to Rust.
In addition, the Help Desk has been made aware of the problem at hand and is updated regularly regarding any and all progress being made to better answer the questions of students and staff.
“The challenge is to inform those affected; they cannot access their e-mail right now,” Rust said. “We have already taken steps to inform those who log-in through My UW-Madison.”
Although UW is working hard to solve the problem, many students are still frustrated because they cannot communicate with professors or gain access to materials needed for class.
UW freshman Carolyn Campbell was waiting for a practice test to arrive via e-mail this past weekend. The test was promised to the class by the professor but many were unable to view the study material, including Campbell.
“It’s obviously frustrating,” Campbell said. “Other people may have been able to use these materials sent out but because my e-mail wasn’t working I was unable to get the practice test in time for my midterm.”
Rust expressed his apologies to students and also said DoIt is working to restore accounts as quickly as possible.
