Unix Systems Group

If you have a question that is not covered by one of the other blog postings, please post it here. Please be sure to leave an Email address we can reach you at, we’ll respond to you directly as soon as possible.

After an extensive evaluation headed by Student Government, the University of South Florida and Google have entered a partnership to bring Google Apps to all USF students. Google Apps is an exciting new system that will provide us with email, as well as a suite of other Google products that will enable USF students to better communicate, share, and collaborate.

To sign up, visit http://mail.usf.edu

Don’t worry, your email address won’t change, and you won’t lose your old messages! The nice thing about Google Apps is that everyone will be able to keep the same email address and we’ll migrate the mail from your existing email account to Google Apps. This means that you can search and access all mail in one central location.

Here are some of the other key benefits:

• 6 Gigabytes of email storage — No more worries about having to delete mail.
• Instant messaging & voice calls — Connect instantly with others when you have a question.
• Google Calendar — Schedule meetings, book rooms, create events, and share calendars with others.
• Docs and Spreadsheets — Create and collaborate in real-time with others at your location, and across the globe.
• Start Page — Start off the day on the right foot by adding your favorite gadgets to your personalized start page.
• Access your information anywhere, anytime — All content is available online. You can also access your email with a mobile device .
• Reliability — Google Apps products are built with speed and reliability in mind.

You can use these URLs to access the service once you’ve registered:

• Mail - http://mail.mail.usf.edu
• Calendar - http://calendar.mail.usf.edu
• Docs - http://docs.mail.usf.edu
• Start Page - http://start.mail.usf.edu

As part of USF’s on-going efforts against copyright infringement, the University has signed an agreement with Ruckus, a digital entertainment network designed to provide students, faculty, and staff with a legal, safe, and community-based way to explore and share music and movies. For more information on how to use this service, please click on the link below or go to http://www.ruckus.com .

Signing up is simple: all you need is a USF email address.

Mail services will be unavailable from 3A.M. to 6A.M. Tuesday August 7th.

As of 5:40A.M. mail services are restored.

Mail services have been down since 3:50 A.M. The services are being switched to the failover server and should be back up shortly. No mail should have been lost during this time.

-Chance Gray 5:45 A.M. 2007/07/27

UPDATE: Mail services were restored at 6:10AM

You can now access the information you need most from the USF Website using your Blackberry, Treo, or web-enabled cell phone. Find emergency-preparedness information, dining menus, sports schedules, news, events, people, MoBull Plus advanced applications, and more by visiting www.usf.edu on your hand-held device. For more information, visit http://www.usf.edu/pdfs/usfgoesmobile.pdf

Email services will be down for about 15 minutes between midnight and 12:30 A.M. The email data has been moved to a new storage device and the mail services will be unavailable as some final adjustments are made. If you have problems with your account after 12:30 A.M. 2/9/2007 please post here.

00:20 A.M. 2/9/2007
Mail services have been up for about 10 minutes now since the switch. Please post here if you are experiencing any problems with your mail.usf.edu account.

A few of you may have noticed the email services actually recovered twice yesterday but failed immediately after coming back online (once at ~ 5 P.M. for about 1/2 hour and once ~ 9 P.M. for about 10 minutes). This time we opted to move the data once again to a new home. This is not our permanent solution however. Ideally the next time we relocate will not be because of hardware failure. We will do it during Spring break or after the end of Spring session giving advanced notice to all of our intentions. Such a move would require minimal downtime.

The storage system serving mail.usf.edu accounts is having problems again. Mail and Blackboard admins are working on the problem with Sun engineers. We will post updates as they become available.

Update (5:37PM) The system was available briefly, but it is still having problems. We are continuing to work with Sun engineers on this issue.

As of 3A.M. the mail server was brought back online. All mail waiting in the queue has been delivered. Some users are experiencing problems with corrupt files. Most of these are showing up in the log but to be sure post here if you encounter any problems with your account.