We have a new Webmail software package available.  The new package, roundcubemail, replaces the squirrelmail package and has many usability and feature enhancements.

First Time Log In

You will be asked to enter your name and signature the first time you log in to roundcubemail.  Enter the user name as you want it to appear to others to whom you send emails.  If you ordinarily use an email signature, copy and paste it to the signature entry box, and it will by default be added to email messages you send.  You can modify these at any time after your first login by going to your Preferences.

New Features

• Messages can be filed into your mail folders using drag and drop. You can select multiple messages to drag and drop using the [ctrl] or [cmd] key.
• Your email quota is displayed on the lower left of the page.
• You can now sort messages by size.
• Math department and UH LDAP directories are searched when you type To: addresses when composing messages.
• You can create mail filters in the Preferences.  Note that if you have existing sieve language filters they may not be compatible with the webmail preferences interface.

Usage Notes

• The ‘Select All’ feature selects every message in your current folder, not just those currently visible. To select only the currently visible emails, use Select Current Page instead of Select All.
• If you want to select and delete emails (such as obvious spam) without opening the email, be sure to close the Preview Pane.

If you have questions or problems please let me know.

The department keeps tape backups of certain user files, and you can request file restoration if you accidentally delete some files.  Files that are backed up include all home directories and the email directories of department members.  Your personal math department web pages are not backed up, but you can request that some or all of your personal web pages are backed up to tape.

Daily backups up to approximately six weeks old can be restored.  If the file(s) you want restored are older than that, weekly backups can be restored going back approximately six months.  In most cases, files older than that can’t be restored.  Contact me if you accidentally delete important files or vital emails.

At 2:00 PM today our primary internal mail and file server crashed, resulting in network outages for most department services. The server was rebooted shortly after crashing, and services were restored at 2:30.  The outage affected internal services and users, but public access to the our web pages and incoming mail server was unaffected  Any email sent during the outage was queued on our public facing email server and delivered after the server reboot.

The SSL certificate for our email server has been upgraded.  The new certificate is what’s known as a “wildcard” SSL certificate.  A wildcard certificate provides SSL encryption for many hosts (i.e. *.math.hawaii.edu) as opposed to a single host (such as kahuna.math.hawaii.edu).  I’ve tested many email clients to make sure the switch from a traditional SSL certificate to a wildcard certificate doesn’t generate errors when checking or sending email, and thus far no problems have been encountered.  However my testing can’t account for every possible device and email client that one might potentially use to check their UH Math department email.

If you encounter any errors or problems when trying to check your mailbox or send email to others, please let me know.

Impetus: Web Site Name Change

Most of the content on our site has already been changed from using the hostname www.math.hawaii.edu to the hostname math.hawaii.edu.  However portions of the site that use SSL encryption, such as login pages and pages using our grade lookup servlet, continued to use the full name www.math.hawaii.edu.  This is because the SSL encryption is tied directly to the host name and our SSL certificate has always used the longer name.  Our new SSL certificate will use the shorter ‘math.hawaii.edu’, and will allow us to encrypt and password protect additional content such as wordpress pages.

Impact: Modifications Required for Existing Web Pages

If you have pages that use SSL encryption, such as a grade lookup page, links within them and links that point to them need to be updated.  Such links will need to be changed from https://www.math.hawaii.edu to https://math.hawaii.edu.  For our grade lookup pages, the link to change is the ACTION field in the “form” section of your grade lookup page.  I can do any needed SSL edits on your pages upon request.

Note that once the certificate is changed, links pointing to https://www.math.hawaii.edu will result in web browser security warnings for those browsing our site.  They will still be able to proceed to the pages but will have to accept a security warning.  Also note that some of your personal bookmarks/favorites may need to be updated to avoid getting the warning.

If you have any questions please contact me.