Setting up your environment for the MA2715/MA2895 sessions

1. Login to the Brunel Windows network. This involves entering your login id. (typically of the form ma18xxx) in the login box and then involves entering your password in the password box and then press return.

2. Activating the "search box" (next to the bottom left hand corner of the screen). In the search box type

   cmd.exe
   

   and when the cmd.exe is shown as an option press return.
3. In the command window created the following lines have to be entered. You can type them exactly as shown or you can load this file

   http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~icstmkw/ma2715/lab_setup.html
   

   into a web browser (e.g. microsoft edge or internet explorer), highlight the lines using the mouse by moving the mouse cursor to the first character of the first line, press the mouse and keep it pressed as you move to the last character of the last of the lines. With the lines highlighted then press the Ctrl key and the letter C at the same time. This saves the highlighted lines to clipboard You then make the command prompt window the active window again and click the mouse on the top left hand corner to get a menu. From the menu select "Edit" and from the sub-menu select "Paste". This should execute the batch of lines that you highlighted. If when you did the copy you did not include the carriage return on the last line then you may need to press the return key.

   The lines to highlight and paste or to type are given below.

   Assuming that you are at Brunel then you can use the following 6 lines.

   net use s: /d
   net use s: "\\v-csfs01\Math Utilities"
   s:
   cd s:\mkw\mybin20\
   s:\mkw\mybin20\mkw_mat20.bat
   h:
   

   If this ran successfully then the task is complete.

   Brief explanation and what this does

   Assuming that the above has completed successfully a folder h:\mybin20 is created which contains a few files, a few icons are put on the desktop, the folder h:\Matlab_Level2 is created and the file "h:\my documents\MATLAB\startup.m" is created or modified.

   Most of the files in h:\mybin20 are to help enable command line utilities to be used which may help me more quickly help you in lab sessions in some situations. The folder also includes some .m files, e.g. print2pdf.m, which you may want to use when using Matlab. print2pdf.m is about saving graphics as a PDF file with some of the parameters that Matlab print uses being suitably adjusted.

   When Matlab starts it looks for a file called startup.m in the location given above and if found it executes the commands in the file. If this file is being created for the first time then the settings are such that Matlab changes to the folder h:\Matlab_Level2. This is set-up as a suggestion for the folder to save your work for the level 2 sessions. If you have your own location where you prefer to put your work for the sessions then you should of course do that and make an adjustment to the startup.m file. Please ask in the sessions if you need help to do that.

   The following table describes what the icons do.

   hfiles_.bat	This gets a list of all your files in all sub-directories of h:\ and sorts them in various ways.
   cmd_win_.bat	This creates a cmd.exe window with many things in the path.
   mkw_s20_.bat	This creates again h:\mybin20 in case it needs updating. If additional utilities become useful then I will add things.
   mkw_mat20_.bat	This does again the start-up indicated above in case it needs updating. mkw_mat20_.bat is basically mkw_s20_.bat plus the parts which create startup.m
   ma2715_html.bat	This starts Microsoft Edge at the index page of the notes for this module.