FAS Rewinds to Slower Era

Harvard returned to a pre-e-mail age this morning as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences servers malfunctioned. A FAS Computing Services employee said that the division couldn't predict when inboxes and course Web sites would be fully operational again.

The server glitches appear to have started around 11 a.m. It's affecting users who access their accounts through the FAS Web site as well as those who forward their mail to outside hosts such as Gmail.

While technicians are working to fix the glitch, "we don't have an estimate time when that's going to happen," Hien Van Do, a user assistant at FAS Computing Services, said shortly before 2 p.m.

"We're going to have to sit back for a bit," Do said.

According to a recorded message on a general student help phone-line:

"FAS Computer Services is currently experiencing problems with its UNIX and e-mail servers. This may cause some network intermittency and login problems. FAS computer services is currently investigating this problem."

Top officials at FAS Computing Services could not be reached for comment via phone early this afternoon.

—Anton S. Troianovski contributed to the reporting of this story.