Loss of Incoming Mail Occurred on Central UNIX Cluster

On July 2, 1997, there was a loss of all incoming mail to the Central
UNIX cluster and outgoing email sent to addresses within the Central
UNIX cluster starting at about 2:00 PM and lasting until 2:21 PM.
During this 21 minutes, 1,120 messages were lost.

Users who were expecting mail during this time should request the mail
be resent.  Users who sent mail to local users during this time should
re-send it.  Those who sent mail to Central UNIX during this time may or
may not have received an error message about the lack of delivery.

Central UNIX addresses that would be affected by this would include any
user at:

        polymail.calpoly.edu    polymail.cpunix.calpoly.edu
        rubens.calpoly.edu      rubens.artisen.calpoly.edu
        moent.calpoly.edu       monet.artisen.calpoly.edu
        cymbal.calpoly.edu      cymbal.aix.calpoly.edu
        flute.calpoly.edu       flute.aix.calpoly.edu
        harp.calpoly.edu        harp.aix.calpoly.edu
        oboe.calpoly.edu        oboe.aix.calpoly.edu
        trumpet.calpoly.edu     trumpet.aix.calpoly.edu
        tuba.calpoly.edu        tuba.aix.calpoly.edu
        violin.calpoly.edu      violin.aix.calpoly.edu

The loss was due to an error in a systems security batch job which
inadvertently changed the permissions of directory which was
symbolically linked to the /tmp subdirectory.  /tmp is used by many
different system and user programs for temporary scratch files.  Mail
uses this sub-directory heavily.  Mail was lost when the directory
became unavailable to the mail delivery processes.