So we’ve gotten approximately 700 emails over the course of the last half-day or so relating to what you’re all calling The Cubmail Outrage. So, let’s see what’s happening here shall we?

UPDATE 4:34 PM: There’s a new message on the CUIT website.  Full text after the jump, but the essence is “most mailboxes working, some still aren’t.”

According to Mathilda McGee-Tubb, a Communication Specialist at Student and Administrative Services who also contacted Bwog about The Cubmail Outrage:

“On December 9, one of our email servers suffered significant hardware failure.  Approximately 5% of Columbia email users may have problems accessing their email.  No mail has been lost, but visible symptoms include an empty inbox and no access to email folders. 

Affected users can access temporary mailboxes to send and receive new email effective 11:00 a.m. today.  From Cubmail, select “Open Folder,” “Public Folders,” then “Private.” Within “Private,” there will be a mailbox with your username.  […]

We are projecting full resolution and access to all email by tomorrow morning.  We apologize for this inconvenience and regret the impact of this outage for our affected customers.”

Still, you, the Affected Cubmail Users, are outraged. According to one tipster, CUIT has received around 130 calls about the downtime. And the problem is affecting the faculty too: History Department administrator/frequent emailer Eleanor Kaye is without Cubmail, so an email was sent around to the History Department announcing her lack of email. Other students have emailed Bwog using comically outdated AOL email addresses, bemoaning their lack of @columbia.edu.

New message on the CUIT website posted at 3:09

Access to most customers’ mailboxes has been restored. Mailboxes can be accessed via Cubmail and Mail clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird as well.

 

Please note the following:

Some mailboxes are still not available.  This means ONLY that the mail server software can’t see those mailboxes yet.  We are still restoring mailboxes, and more will appear as we continue to work.

For some users the inbox is not available yet. New mail is still being delivered to Public Folders.private.<username> where <username> is each user’s name.

Customers should avoid creating new mail folders or move messages until  the recovery is completed.