[21545] in Athena Bugs
Fwd: Matlab installation on Athena is not working (case 349557)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel Jamous)
Mon Mar 3 17:30:23 2003
Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.2.20030303165937.01fecaf0@hesiod>
Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 17:29:52 -0500
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
From: Daniel Jamous <jamous@MIT.EDU>
Cc: amb@MIT.EDU, casetracker@MIT.EDU
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Hi,
Following up on my phone conversation with Andrew Boardman, here's the
original message that the faculty member sent to us about the MATLAB
problems (the full record is in casetracker case 349557) in room 1-115.
These problems happen under the MATLAB GUI interface (MATLAB has its own
Java) that takes memory.
Note: last semester (fall 2002), the MATLAB version was the same as well as
the machines in room 1-115 (IBM Linux) and the problems didn't appear.
Presumably, the only thing that changed between the two semesters is the
Athena release.
Now looking at the system requirements on the MathWorks website, I found
the following information for the current version of MATLAB 6.5:
Memory : 128 MB RAM, 256 MB RAM recommended
128 MB swap space
Hardware: Pentium, Pentium Pro, II, III, IV, Intel Xeon, AMD Athlon and
Athlon XP
OS : ix86 - Linux
X Windows (X11R6)
Libraries : glibc 2.1.x or 2.2 (2.2.x preferred, recommend at least 2.1.3)
gcc 2.95.x
xFree86 3.3.x (recommend 3.3.6 or better, including 4.x)
Linux 2.2.x or 2.4.x (if 2.4, recommend 2.4.10 or better)
Would it be possible to tell me which (if any) of these above changed
between the fall and the spring?
Thank you very much,
Daniel
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>To: f_l@mit.edu, jamous@mit.edu
>From: "Herbert H. Sawin" <hhsawin@MIT.EDU>
>Subject: Matlab installation on Athena is not working
>Cc: geosteph@mit.edu, ctommaso@mit.edu, ckbai@mit.edu, whgreen@mit.edu
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>I teach 10.10 and during our first Matlab assignment help session last
>night in Rm 1-115 I discovered several significant bugs in the
>installation of Matlab on Athena. I have taught this subject for the
>previous two terms without these difficulties, therefore, I believe that
>the present installation of Matlab is faulty.
>
>Matlab freezes, not responding to any input and must be closed. This can
>be brought on by several different sequences, but for example, on one
>students computer in 1-115, the clearing of the work space froze the
>Matlab program everytime. I even restarted Matlab and cleared the Matlab
>workspace doing nothing else resulted in Matlab freezing on this
>particular computer.
>
>Matlab also froze under other conditions which were not so apparent or
>reproducible.
>
>On other students computers, clearing the workspace was necessary to get
>programs to execute correctly. For example, labeling of a figure using
>"xlabel('test')" did not work until the workspace had been cleared and the
>same script rerun. Since this command does not use the workspace, the
>cause is difficult to understand. I found this sort of clearing of the
>workspace necessary to get the code to run correctly with several other
>scripts that the students were running. I have not seen this malady in
>the past.
>
>Matlab on several the students computers was partially hidden by the
>window. Restarting the Matlab installation would not size the window to
>Matlab correctly. Opening files in Matlab on some computers resulted in a
>window that could not be found on the screen.
>
>I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
>
>Herb Sawin
Daniel Jamous
Faculty Liaison, Academic Computing Support
Information Systems
MIT, Room N42-040G
Cambridge, MA 02139
tel 1 : 617-252-1383
tel 2 : 617-253-0115 (faculty liaison line)
fax : 617-253-8665
e-mail : jamous@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/acs
