University of Alaska experienced a major incident on October 11, 2025 affecting Other IT Services, lasting 15h 46m. The incident has been resolved; the full update timeline is below.
Affected components
Update timeline
- investigating Oct 11, 2025, 02:16 AM UTC
We have received reports that Pharos Printing is currently experiencing issues. Our Technology Support Services team is currently investigating. Please expect an update at 7:30 PM Thank you for your patience during the resolution of this issue!
- investigating Oct 11, 2025, 03:37 AM UTC
The Technology Support Services team is continuing to investigate the issue. Thank you for your patience during the resolution of this issue. You can expect updates tomorrow at 10:00 AM.
- resolved Oct 11, 2025, 06:03 PM UTC
The Technology Support Services team has resolved the issue with the Pharos Student Printing service. Thank you again for your patience during the resolution of this issue!
- postmortem Oct 22, 2025, 06:32 PM UTC
Pharos MobilePrint Outage Problem Impact Analysis Event Occurrence: 10/10/25 # Background Pharos MobilePrint is the service that allows students to securely upload print jobs to a cloud portal and release those print jobs at 12 printing locations across UAF Campus. When the Mobile Print module of Pharos is not working, no users can upload print jobs to the cloud portal \([print.alaska.edu](http://print.alaska.edu)\). # Break Down of the Problem TSS was notified of the outage late afternoon 4:30pm 10/10 via an incident that came through our ticketing system. A user had reported that they were unable to upload print jobs to [print.alaska.edu](http://print.alaska.edu). TSS was also aware that a temporary site license was applied to the pharos servers during a transition time between software contract renewals. TSS was unaware that 1 of the 2 temporary licenses for pharos, the mobileprint license, had not applied and the service was not licensed to use MobilePrint anymore. # Target State / Goal Expected service state for Pharos printing is 99.9% uptime 365 days/yr except for defined maintenance windows to complete routine maintenance. Pharos systems managed under the Technology Support Services team have not yet reached this level of service delivery but are working towards it. During times of licensing lapse, customers should expect the service to not be available. # Root Cause Analysis TSS manager worked with original TSS technician on initial troubleshooting. Manager immediately contacted vendor for technical support 10/10 5:30pm. Vendor reached back out to notify that technical support would be available the following morning. After restarting the pharos services and the physical server several times, it was identified that the issue was not with the temporary license or any of the running services, but corruption within the mobile print module itself. After taking a backup of the mobileprint directory locally on the server, the mobileprint module was uninstalled and then reinstalled on the server. After reconfiguring the mobileprint module, service was restored. Test prints and pings were sent to affected printers to make sure they were operable. # Develop Countermeasures Reasonable countermeasures would be setting up maintenance windows and appointments. It would be useful to have team member monitoring and maintaining the server. Patching regularly, ensuring that components are in a healthy state, restarting services that have had a long uptime. # Implementation of Countermeasures The best time to implement this maintenance window for Pharos printers would be Monday evening from 7:00-10:00pm to allow for sufficient time for testing and validation without impacting peak usage times. # Follow Up / Review Review progress on maintenance schedule in 6 months \(April 15th\)