Installing Matlab 2011 En Masse using Group Licenses

I’m fortunate enough to be working with a large amount of Group Licenses – the kind that are licensed manually and the same kind that make it a pain if you want to roll out Matlab quietly or unattended… ly. The obvious choice would have been to start off with Concurrent licenses but its not easy to switch over in most cases.

Regardless, here’s a script that may help anyone stuck in the same problem:

Matlab 2011b Autoit 1.0 – (Download 288KB – Dec 21 2011)
*Includes Source Code

Script Setup:

You will need to include the package on the image of the desktop, this is best run after Sysprep (as an example). The Licenses folder needs to be populated with all your licenses. This can be tedious as using the online interface means downloading one at a time. You must name the license the MAC of the desktop (this should be listed in the online interface) with no special characters and an extension ‘LIC’. The File Installation Key (FIK) which is provided when requesting the license online, must also be saved into a file named {macaddress}.txt. This might be a bit of work, but its done once and should save time overall.

Secondly, the actual program files are needed. Create a folder called Program at the same level of licenses and dump the Matlab installation files in there with no modifications.

Script Theory:

The script begins by gathering all local MAC addresses of network cards attached to the dektop. It then checks subfolder ‘Licenses’ for any files matching any LAN MAC address. If none found the script generates file c:\matlabxxxx.NOMAC and exits. If found the script generates the following:

c:\matlab2011b.act (the copied FIK from the .txt file under licenses folder)
c:\matlab2011b.lic (the copied license file under licenses folder)
c:\matlab2011b.input (unattended answer file generated by script, pointing to the above two files)

Once installing there will also be a matlab2011b.log file of the installation log.

Tips:

For my code (not included) I added a quick check at the end to upload a notice to a file share whether or not the install succeeded (by checking for either the NOMAC file or program files\matlab missing). If you are capable of making a batch script or other, I would recommend doing this. I excluded this code as the location for everyone would be different.

Credit:

Thanks out to Rich Easton who developed an Auto It script to detect the local MAC hardware address. I had to modify it quite a bit to fit my needs but his idea is a way that didn’t jump to mind and it saved me some time.