March 2009 Archives

The mail server has continued to accepted mail addressed to @icarus.mcmaster.ca some six years after icarus, the former mail server, was decommissioned. About 20% of the spam sent to Math & Stats addresses is actually sent to icarus; it appears that very, very little real mail is addressed to icarus anymore.

As of 3:30 pm today, mail sent to an account @icarus.mcmaster.ca will bounce.

If you are worried that someone may be trying to send you legitimate mail, let me know and I will send you a list of addresses which have tried to reach you @icarus.

The scanner scanneth scans.

The main McMaster web site (and some related sites) is down. Nothing to do with the departmental systems, but you might want to know that it's not just you.

The server and workstations were a bit sluggish until ca. 9:45 am due to the nightly backups running later than usual (related to the power outage).

The HH-303 scanner is not scanning. I have placed a service call and expect the technician on Tuesday.

There was a power failure (which affected all of West Hamilton and beyond) on Sunday afternoon. The web/email/file servers and compute servers on backup power were not affected, but some workstations will need to be started or rebooted.

We are now able to backup using the normal windows: four weeks' changes kept for mathserv; two weeks' changes for all other systems.