Computer crash strands students

Computer hardware failure caused the Cal State Long Beach web server, http://www.csulb.edu, to crash Monday leaving anyone needing online CSULB information stranded.

No data will be lost as it is backed up on tape, according to e-mail sent to the campus community by Dr. Mike Mahoney, associate vice president for information technology.

"E-mail, news and web surfing off-campus still work," said Mahoney.

He said that staff worked all day to fix the problem but it may take a day or two for the web site to be up and running. Old drives will be used as a temporary fix.

"The CSULB web server gets hit thousands of times a day," said Nancy Rayner, associate director of academic computing. "Students, faculty and researchers from around the world use it."

The CSULB web server handles all online traffic coming in and out of campus. With the server down, anyone trying to obtain or disseminate information about CSULB would be informed that the server is not found.

Rayner said the most frequently retrieved pages are faculty data bases, class schedules and home pages, which she described as self advertising for students seeking pen pals.