Category Archives: Labs

Posts about computer labs and classrooms at Williams College

Image Build – Mac – AFP location files for each graduating class

Students have network file space on our Achilles server based on their graduating year.  I presently provide links to these locations in a common area on the Mac image.

in /Library/Application Support/Williams/Network File Space/Achilles are a series of .afloc files based on student graduating year.  Each year when the image is created I have to add a file for the next class of students.

One way to do that is:

  • sudo -s
  • cd /Library/Application\ Support/Williams/Netowk\ File\ Space/Achilles
  • cp “2015 Students.afploc” “2016 Students.afploc”
  • vi  (or some other way edit) “2016 Students.afploc” to replace “15Students” with “16Students”

It is tempting to remove the older files but sometimes students start as in one class but then have to extend their stay so remove these with care.

Software – MatLab install “archives” folder structure

 

The MatLab distribution from MatWorks tries to save space on the disk and time for the download transfer.  For the products you are licensed for they send you a “common” file and also a CPU-specific file.  When installing MatLab on a particular CPU you need to format the “archives” folder carefully.

The archive folder should contain two other folders, “common” and, depending on your OS, one of “maci64″(Mac), “glnxa64” (linux), “win64” (windows).

For each product that needs to be installed there should be a zip file in the “common” folder and a corresponding  zip file in the OS-specific folder.  Leave these files in “zip” format.  If they have been unzipped auto-magically by your browser or other download tools you’ll need to re-download them forcing them to remain “zip” files.

Example for a Mac:

  • “Communications_System_Toolbox54_common.zip”  goes in the “common” folder
  • “Communications_System_Toolbox54_maci64.zip” goes in the “maci64” folder

Here is a screen capture of a install directory structure that works on a Mac:

Matlab_Install_Folder_Setup

Windows 8 – Deleting windows.old and temp install files

When doing an upgrade to windows 8 the installer can leave behind a large amount of data in a few locations.  To remove these use Disk Cleanup with the option to clean-up system files. I have gained back more than 30 GB with this process.

Go to the Desktop and open Windows Explorer, then right-click on the system drive (usually C: or D:) and select Properties.  Then click on Disk Clean-up.  In that window click on “Clean Up System Files”.  This will add to the list of files that can be deleted.   In the new, expanded list be sure to select windows.old and the windows install files.  Then let the disk cleanup happen.

For another reference see:

http://www.jstawski.com/archive/2012/06/01/Deleting-the-Windows-old-directory-after-upgrading-to-Windows-8.aspx

 

 

Mac – What makes a volume bootable

 

To quote from the link below:

Bootability comes down to a few simple rules:

  1. The hard drive enclosure must support booting a Macintosh (applies to external hard drives only)
  2. The computer must support booting from the interface used to attach the hard drive (e.g. USB, Firewire, eSATA)
  3. The computer must support booting from the hard drive’s partition format (e.g. APM vs GPT vs MBR)
  4. The cloned filesystem must have all the required components of Mac OS X
  5. The cloned operating system must be properly “blessed”

 

See the complete info at:

http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CCC/en.lproj/troubleshooting/what-makes-a-volume-bootable.html