The Red and Black

By RUSS HENDERSON The Red & Black

The University's registration and e-mail system was brought to a halt Wednesday afternoon when ARCHES went down for the second time since the semester began.

The shutdown, which was less than two hours long - between 2 and 4 p.m. - resulted from a system software problem, said Harold Pritchett, associate director for server system administration.

"What we have is a bunch of bugs in the code," he said, "which are causing the system to periodically slow down gradually, then stop."

ARCHES is run by 16 computers, two of which are involved in the validation of users' IDs and passwords.

Pritchett said it is the software of those computers that is causing the problem.

The slow-down can be temporarily remedied by rebooting the ARCHES system, he said.

That is what University Computing and Networking Services did to get the system up and running again on Wednesday and on the first day of classes.

"Rebooting ARCHES isn't like rebooting your PC," he said. "It takes half an hour, and we have to boot everybody off before we do it." "So it's not an acceptable thing to do all the time."

Pritchett said UCNS is trying to permanently resolve the problem by working with the software's designer, IBM.

"We are working continuously with IBM on this," he said.

The giant computer company has a problem resolution process for dealing with problems like this one, Pritchett said.

"We're at the highest priority in that process," he said.

Though ARCHES was unavailable only for a short while, students at the University's computer lab in Memorial Hall were irritated when they couldn't sign on.

"It sucks," said Zach Mitchell, a freshman from Jacksonville, Fla., who tried to use ARCHES to e-mail a friend in Florida.

"Every other day you come in and it doesn't work. There's no consistency."

Stephen Stincer, a junior from Augusta, tried to log on in order to e-mail his brother.

"But like everything else here, it doesn't work," Stincer said. "That seems to be a running theme at the University the last two weeks."

Pritchett said that UCNS and IBM already have made some changes that may help the system run better until a permanent solution can be found.

"It's hard to say when we'll have it running normally," Pritchett said. "But I know I've got a problem and I need to fix it."

Article Tools