On Thursday evening, May 31, the Computing Infrastructure Support Department (CIS) installed a new Multiplexor system for the IMAP4 email server as the first major step towards significantly increasing the capacity of the server. Once the Mulitplexor is fully in place, the system will be able to handle four times the volume as the current system (which is important as the amount of stored email continues to grow at a rate of almost 5 percent per month).

The installation went well and there were no apparent problems until about 7:30 on the following morning when the system unexpectedly went down. It took four hours of working on this with Netscape staff to identify the problem. The crash resulted from a feature in the newest version of the server software that was incompatible with an older release of the Netscape client.

“We immediately switched off the feature and the system was brought back into operation,” said CIS Department Head Rosemary Evanoff. “Although the outage was frustrating for everyone, we were able to restore service without any loss of mail.”

The source of the problem – some Lab employees using out-of-date software and Netscape not taking this possibility into account when creating new versions of its email server application – underlines the importance of keeping your software up to date. “Since software vendors do not expect customers to be more than one release behind their current version, we are always vulnerable to problems which, as in this case, can dramatically impact the whole Lab community if everyone does not keep their systems current,” Evanoff said.

CIS periodically tests newer versions of Netscape Communicator, customizes them for use at the Lab and notifies Lab users as the new versions become available.

“It is not possible to identify what version of the email client is loaded on all computers that access our system, so it is important for our users to download and install newer versions with reasonable frequency,” Evanoff said. “Doing so gives you the benefits and features of the new versions, and enables us to provide better support and more smoothly provide new capabilities on the server.”

The current releases of Netscape Communicator email client recommended for use at LBNL are Communicator 4.75 for PCs, 4.75 for Macs, 4.73 for RedHat Linux 6.x, and 4.51 for SunOS. All of these versions are available from the Lab’s software download page. Users of other UNIX systems can download the latest version from Netscape. However, there is a tradeoff in that the versions from Netscape do not include some Lab-specific features, such as automatic lookup in the Lab address book linked to the LBNL directory.

By upgrading to the newest versions of their email clients, employees can help minimize such problems as those described above. For employees who do not have access to a high-speed link from systems they use remotely, the Help Desk can arrange to provide the needed software on a CD.