CIRC upgrades to faster servers for e-mail

As the Computer Information and Resource Center prepares for the next upgrade of the GWIS2 computer system, administrators are looking for ways to prevent a repeat of last week’s glitches.

“We will try to do it this weekend, however this time it will not require much system downtime,” CIRC Director Brad Reese said.

The new system crashed when CIRC tried to move the GWIS2 system from one computer to another. Rather than spend several hours to recover the old system, CIRC decided to fall back to the old machine.

“The problem was caused by corrupt swap space,” said Greg Ferguson, one of CIRC’s UNIX administrators. Ferguson said swap space is the UNIX equivalent of Windows 95’s virtual memory.

CIRC intended to change to the new system to achieve better performance, he said.

“The new machine has significantly faster hard drives, 50 percent more memory, faster network connections and significantly faster and more powerful processors,” Ferguson said. He said the new machine will perform better and faster.

CIRC said one complicating factor is the size of GWIS2’s inbox. As a result of the large size, CIRC resorted to moving mail.

“Moving mail is done when the shared inbox area on the system fills up,” Ferguson said. “When we move mail we find the largest inboxes on the system and move those inboxes to a saved mail folder in the user’s directory called moved-mail.”

Because a software program performs the move mail function, the privacy and security of student’s accounts are not disrupted.

Ferguson said users above their quota of hard drive space on the system were subject to such action. An estimated 350 of more than 23,600 accounts are above the quota.

-Jason Steinhardt

Man assaults UPD officer at Tower Records

A man was arrested outside Tower Records Saturday after assaulting a University Police Department officer and attempting to steal merchandise from the record store, UPD Director Dolores Stafford said.

UPD received a call that a fight was in progress outside Tower Records at 5:13 p.m. Saturday. Three UPD officers arrived at the scene as a Tower Records security guard and another individual were arguing in front of the store, she said.

As one UPD officer prepared to handcuff the individual, who had attempted to steal more than $250 of Tower Records merchandise, the man struck the officer in the chest, Stafford said.

“The officer told the individual that he was handcuffing him for his own safety, and the man threw a punch at the officer,” Stafford said.

Three UPD officers restrained the individual and handcuffed him until Metropolitan Police Department officers arrived to arrest the 26-year-old man for simple assault and theft.

-Russ Rizzo