Matlab_and_debian_

title: Matlab and Debian date: 2005-04-07 17:16:35

A few tips for installing Matlab on Debian:

1. Debian does not mount devpts by default (at least, not on my installs). You'll need this. Run: mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts and then put it into /etc/fstab.
2. oscheck.sh, part of Matlab's many startup scripts, attempts to run /lib/libc.so.6 in order to get the version. I had no idea this could be done. One email I found on Google suggested changing the line in the script that ran libc to one that just took the version from strings...but then Matlab support (who were great, btw) suggest chmod +x. That never occured to me...I mean, it's a library, right? But it worked.
3. Debian (my installs, anyway) mounts /cdrom with the noexec option. This causes an error when you try to run /cdrom/installer: /bin/sh: bad interpreter The solution, of course, is to mount the CD like so: mount -o exec /cdrom

Re: that last step: Don't forget to do this for the other CDs! Shocking confession: I did forget, and I'm pretty sure the graphical installer did not catch this. I was left with a nominally successful install that simply did not work when I tried to run it graphically: it would hang at the splash screen and eat up 99% of the CPU time. I fucked around with strace, tracked down file descriptors and I don't know whatall until I finally tried reinstalling on a local machine. The install was as root, but root couldn't connect to the X display so I ran it as a text-based installer...whereupon I noticed that it complained that it couldn't run the installer on the second CD. Well, fuck. Another problem I had was with the path: for some reason it wasn't set up correctly, and when I started I got errors about colordef: undefined function. When I tried to follow the suggestion and run restoredefaultpath;pathdef I got an undefined function error for that, too. Matlab support provided the solution for that: remove the old toolbox/local/pathdef.m, run genpath.sh (a script downloaded from their website), and run Matlab again. It seemed to take a few restarts of Matlab before the new path took, but now that it has everything seems to be working again. Again, thanks to Matlab support for helping me out...prompt, patient and helpful.