Installing Matlab

[Vijay Kaul]

I was wondering if anyone has had any recent (or not-so-recent)
experience installing Matlab on FreeBSD/PC-BSD? (Yes, I know about
octave.)

 I'm not entirely new to *nix, but I'm novice enough that I can't seem
to get this to work.

 Perhaps the shortest and simplest solution would be if Mathworks own
installer would function, but that runs as a Java Web Start
application, and I can't seem to get that working in Opera, Firefox,
or Konqueror.

 The automatic rout having failed, I've downloaded the files manually,
and I've tried to run the install script; however, it's failed as
well. I found this site:
<http://matrossi.blogspot.com/2011/08/installing-matlab-2011a-on-freebsd.html>,
which claims installation instructions for PC-BSD8.2 boiling down to:
open up the shell scripts and take /bin/sh --> /compat/linux/bin/sh.
Well, that seems to help a bit, but it also fails because the install
script determines my architecture to be x68, while the downloads are
for (what they call) a64. (My system is indeed a 64-bit system.
Perhaps the above instructions were for an x86 system.)

 I feel like if I could modify the install script sufficiently, the
install would work. My bash scripting is weak, though, and I worry
about screwing up my system and/or the installation. There are only a
few functions in there that are looking for architecture type, usually
with the output from uname. I think fixing those would work...?

 Could anyone help me get past this point?

 Thanks in advance! And please, if there's any info I can provide that
would be helpful, please just let me know.

 Output of uname -a:
 FreeBSD pcbsd-8517 9.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE #2: Tue Nov 27
03:45:16 UTC 2012
root at darkstar:/usr/obj/pcbsd-build90/fbsd-source/9.1/sys/GENERIC amd64

 The install script in question: <http://pastebin.com/QkEH1vkF>

 Thanks again,
 --Vijay