Computing@Thayer » Computer Labs http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu The blog of your Friendly Computing Services Team Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:54:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Running MATLAB Non-interactively http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/09/28/running-matlab-non-interactively/ http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/09/28/running-matlab-non-interactively/#comments Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:45:56 +0000 jordan http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/?p=177 I was working with a grad student this weekend to take advantage of compute resources effectively, and one of the questions that came up was how run Matlab non-interactively as well as persistently.

To run Matlab persistently (so it doesn’t die when you log out), “screen” can be used as described at this link.

To run Matlab non-interactively, I found a concise and useful page with instructions and explanations: http://people.scs.fsu.edu/~burkardt/m_src/matlab_batch/matlab_batch.html .

]]> http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/09/28/running-matlab-non-interactively/feed/ 0 New iMacs in Cummings Great Hall http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/01/31/new-imacs-in-cummings-great-hall/ http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/01/31/new-imacs-in-cummings-great-hall/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:24:57 +0000 jared http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/01/31/new-imacs-in-cummings-great-hall/ iMacWe are delighted to announce that the four aging Macs in the Great Hall have been replaced by four fancy schmancy new iMacs running Mac OS X 10.5.

With a bigger monitor, much faster processors, and more RAM, the new computers should be a huge improvement.

We’re also using Mac OS X’s new Guest User account feature. Every time you log out, the machines will restore to a nice fresh state. All old documents are removed, and preferences get restored to their sane defaults.

Keep in mind this means any document you save to the computer’s hard drive will be deleted at logout.  So don’t save anything important.

To make it easy to store your data safely on ThayerFS, we’ve added handy icons for each ThayerFS Share on the Desktop.

Enjoy!

]]> http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2008/01/31/new-imacs-in-cummings-great-hall/feed/ 0 Saving Energy in the Computer Labs – Part II http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/08/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs-part-ii/ http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/08/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs-part-ii/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:30:25 +0000 jordan http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/08/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs-part-ii/ When I left you in my last post on saving energy in the computer labs, I had four machines suspending in the M210 computer lab. There were mixed results during the test run. The older, Dell Dimension 4600 computers went to sleep and woke back up without a problem, however the newer Dell Optiplex 745 computers failed to come out of suspend approximately 30% of the time. Try as I might, updating drivers and playing with BIOS and power settings, I was unable to resolve this problem. I’m in communication with Dell, and hope to find out why the machines will not wake up and come to a solution shortly. In the mean time, hibernation works just find the Optiplex 745, at the cost of an additional five seconds in wake up time (a total of ten seconds to come out of hibernation). The difference between sleep (or standby, which is a synonym for sleep in a computer) and hibernation is that when a machine is sleeping, a snapshot of the state the computer was in before sleep is kept in the computers RAM. When hibernating, the state is stored on the hard disk. Since RAM is faster than the hard disk, the machine can wake up much faster from suspend than hibernate. The cost of using suspend is that power has to be supplied to the RAM so that the stored state will not be lost. Hard disks are persistent, and do not require power to keep the stored state. With our computers, the difference in power saving is only a couple of Watts per machine.

With the eventual success of the test run, I have implemented hibernate and suspend programs in all of our windows labs: M210, the Cad Lab, the digital electronics lab (C221) and the analog electronics lab (C222). The newer Optiplex computers are being sent into hibernation, while the older Dimension computers are being sent into suspend. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

]]> http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/08/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs-part-ii/feed/ 0 Saving Energy in the Computer Labs http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/02/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs/ http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/02/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs/#comments Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:25:03 +0000 jordan http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/02/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs/ Ever wonder how much power an average idle computer takes to run? A newer Dell Optiplex 745 with a 22″ LCD monitor, such as those in M210, consume 110 Watts just sitting there, not logged in with the screen saver on. When the monitor goes into power save mode, the consumption goes down to 70 Watts. When the computer itself goes into standby mode, power consumption plummets to just 2 Watts. Since most of the ~65 Thayer lab computers are idle most of the time, this presents an opportunity for saving a great deal of power.

Until now, computing services has set the monitors on our lab computers to go into power save mode, but the computers have remained idling, consuming around 70 Watts. Why? In Windows there is no off the shelf way to suspend a computer based on whether someone is logged in or not. We did not want machines going to sleep in the middle of the night just because the mouse had not been moved in an hour as that might interrupt a simulation running on the computer. To address this problem, we at computing services have written a script that puts the machine to sleep only when no one is logged on. This script is currently in testing on four computers in M210, and we hope to distribute it to our other lab computers in the near future. When a machine is sleeping, Its power light blinks, and the computer can be brought out of sleep mode by pressing the power button briefly. It takes about five seconds for the computer to wake up. If you have any questions of responses, please let us know!

]]> http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/11/02/saving-energy-in-the-computer-labs/feed/ 1 Anti-Viral Computing http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/30/anti-viral-computing/ http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/30/anti-viral-computing/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:29:17 +0000 dricker http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/30/anti-viral-computing/ Jordan at the M210 Purell Dispenser
Jordan is demonstrating the latest weapon in our safe-computing arsenal: The public Purell dispenser.

Located in the M210 computing lab, we encourage its use early and often as the Winter flu season gathers steam.

Directions: Apply once to hands before using the public non-sanitized computer keyboards. Apply once more on your way out.

Extra credit: Do not sneeze on the keyboards.

Note: Use only as directed. The following is highly discouraged:
Dricker demonstrates the wrong way to use Purell

]]> http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/30/anti-viral-computing/feed/ 0 The Best Computer Lab Support You’ve Never Heard Of http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/12/the-best-computer-lab-support-youve-never-heard-of/ http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/12/the-best-computer-lab-support-youve-never-heard-of/#comments Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:01:42 +0000 dricker http://computing.thayer.dartmouth.edu/blog/2007/10/12/the-best-computer-lab-support-youve-never-heard-of/ Did you know the M210, Cummings 227, and CAD computing labs are staffed most afternoons and evenings by a member of the Computing TA cadre?

These students-by-day are available to help folks use the lab computers, printers, and applications, and are a great resource for learning how to use some of the advanced software we have installed. Individual program expertises vary from TA to TA, but most are well versed in Matlab. If you need help, ask!

New this term, the CAD Lab is staffed two evenings a week with an experienced CAD-ophile to help those with mechanicistically-bent projects.

The full term schedule is posted on our help page. Please take advantage of this underutilized wealth of experience!

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