Sungard SCT: As useless as tits on a parakeet

Sungard SCT is the parent company of both Banner (one of, if not the biggest Student Information Systems out there) and the Luminis Portal product. I've been spending the past several days cleaning up the mess that our Luminis consultant left when he half-completed an upgrade from III.2.1 to III.3.0 (he was supposed to bring us up to III.3.1).

Following the pre-install tasks, I started the III.3.1 upgrade and was confronted almost immediately with a useless Java thread dump:

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Installing luminis-3.3.1.0:
backup ...................... done
cache configman data ........ done
prepare for install ......... internal error
Error: internal error

email.host.fullname value cannot be blank

[...] non-sense removed

bash-2.05# cpver
Luminis Platform 3.3.1.0 build 74 (partially installed)
3.3.0.0 build 552
3.2.0.0 build 692

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When I went to the myMason homepage I got this:


Well that's not helpful at all, is it? Earlier this week I logged a call with SCT because for some unknown reason I can no longer log into their support website. They told me they reset my password, but the password they provided me didn't work. They have a "Forgot Password" option that should let me reset it myself, but that has never worked for me, it tells me that the information I gave it doesn't match (like my phone number and my email address). They were supposed to fix that again on Tuesday, no such luck.

But now here I am with an abended upgrade and no website support, so I call the 800 number to log a support call, and even though it's "Priority 2" I get a voicemail box where I can leave them a message and they'll get back to me when they run out of fondue.

Huh.

I leave them a message, and then I let my boss know. We have someone over at support that we backline into sometimes when we're not getting results, so she told me to give him a call. He instant messaged me the fix in less than 2 minutes. In the mean time I just got an email that my support request was received and will be assigned to an analyst shortly.


Have you ever seen the Underpants Gnomes episode of South Park? They sneak into peoples bedrooms when they're sleeping and steal their underpants in hopes of getting rich. Their motto: "Step 1: Collect Underpants. Step 3: Profit." -- there is no Step 2. That is definately Sungard SCT's mission statement.