It’s no secret that MATLAB focuses on Windows users. Mac gets some love, but Linux gets zero. This is how you install MATLAB R2013a on Linux.
My situation: I purchased a MATLAB student license through my school last year. After using MATLAB on Windows during the school year, I decided to switch to Julia on Ubuntu during my summer internship. I fell in love with Julia, IPyton notebooks, and Ubuntu; I vowed never to return to my dated MATLAB ways. Now it’s the fall semester and I’m taking a class that requires MATLAB. I reasoned with the professor (who uses Julia himself), but he said I must turn in MATLAB code like everyone else. Fine. I’m disappointed, but not despondent. For my first homework assignment I did everything in Julia then rebooted into Windows to write MATLAB code. I turned in both versions of the code. Not willing to give up IPython notebooks, I wound up pasting the MATLAB code from a dropbox-synced .m file into the IJulia notebook containing my Markdown and Julia code.
It took forever. I need to get MATLAB working on the Ubuntu side.
Step 1: Google “download matlab linux”. Find this super-long page that beats around the bush without telling you, as a Linux user, what to do.
Step 2: Google “download matlab” in hopes that a more generic query will yield a more useful page. Find this page.
Step 3: Choose “Download Previously Purchased Products” and then “Linux (64-bit)”. Thank God I don’t have a 32-bit system.
Step 4: Find that I must have JRE to download multiple MATLAB products at once. Even though MATLAB is a massive, decades-old company, I need to download third-party software in order to install it. Of course, I could just manually download each piece, but I don’t have six hours to carve out of my schedule.
Step 5: Choose “I have JRE” because I have Java and that should be good enough. Check the packages I want on the list that appears, and click “Download”.
Step 6: Open the “download_agent” file that appears in my Downloads folder. See a Firefox window displaying raw XML and telling me it doesn’t know what to do.
Step 7: Look for Java plugin on Chrome, find that it never existed on Linux and no longer exists anywhere else.
Step 8: Scratch head. Download Java as compressed binary for 64-bit Linux in desperation.
Step 9: Unpack .tar.gz and explore. Try passing “download_agent” to “java” as an argument to no avail.
Step 10: Google “how the fuck do I install matlab on linux?” Find a hysterical catalog of MATLAB’s inadequacies.
Step 11: Discover that something called “Java Web Start” is the program that runs “download_agent”.
Step 12: Guess that jre1.7.0/bin/javaws is the magical “Java Web Start” program that can make this nightmare go away. Run javaws ~/Downloads/download_agent.
Step 13: See the MATLAB download assistant program. Wipe tears of joy on sleeve.
Step 14: Wait two hours for 1.5 GB of MathWorks software to download over the school Wi-Fi network. Write blog post while waiting.
Step 15: Launch installer. Accept license agreement. Tell installer it’s okay to create /usr/local/MATLAB/R2013a_Student and put MATLAB there. See error: “Failed to create folder (/usr/local/MATLAB/R2013a_Student/).” Guess I need to re-run the installer with sudo privilege?
Step 16: Run installer using sudo ./install in
/tmp/mathworks_downloads/R2013a_Student_Version
Accept license agreement again. This time the installer is able to make a new folder. Hallelujah.
Step 17: Tell installer to create symbolic links in usr/local/bin. Confirm all my elections thus far. Depending on how long this takes I may need to cancel. One does not simply skip a pasta dinner.
Step 18: See activation window, which tells me to enter a serial number and email. Go to My Account on mathworks.com, download license file, copy into
/usr/local/MATLAB/R2013a_Student/licenses
Step 19: Try running matlab from command line. See this:
License checkout failed.
License Manager Error -9
The hostid of your computer (000000000000) does not match the hostid of the license file
(DISK_SERIAL_NUM=20383011).
Troubleshoot this issue by visiting:
http://www.mathworks.com/support/lme/R2013a/9
Diagnostic Information:
Feature: SR_MATLAB
License path: /home/jkersulis/.matlab/R2013a_licenses:/usr/local/MATLAB/R2013a_Student/licenses/license.dat:/usr/l
ocal/MATLAB/R2013a_Student/licenses/license.lic
Licensing error: -9,57.
Step 20: Cry inside. Google “matlab serial number” hoping there is a way to find the actual number rather than downloading an ignorant broken license file. Find this page.
Step 21: Go back to My Account and notice the serial number in a tiny, lightweight gray font. Swear profusely.
Step 22: Enter serial number and student email into activation window. See this: Error -2,007: Unable to activate your machine. The activation process cannot detect a valid Host ID which utilizes a currently supported naming convention. Please refer to the following solution ID, to help resolve this issue: 1-661QJD
Step 23: Abandon hope of finishing this grueling process today. Google “1-661QJD”, which makes top ten stupidest search queries of my life.
Step 24: Find this page, which says I need to jump through hoops to get my computer to produce a unique machine ID so MATLAB can make sure I’m not cheating.
Step 25: Realize that illegal activation via fake license would have let me unlock the entire MATLAB product suite and go home after Step 18.
Step 26: Sigh deeply. Go home to eat dinner.
Step 27: Delete license file from Step 18, run sudo matlab. Enter serial number, school email address, and other personal info.
Step 28: Receive warning that I cannot add a new activation as I have too many. Go to my MathWorks account page and deactivate the MATLAB on my 6-year-old laptop (which doesn’t even have MATLAB on it anymore).
Step 29: Run sudo matlab again.
Step 30: Receive confirmation that MATLAB has been registered and is ready to go. Sleep.
All this and I still get a nice “Student License” warning every time I open the program along with an obnoxious watermark on every plot I produce. Thanks MathWorks!
S. Morris’s 3-step process to install R2011a on Ubuntu 11.04:
- Go back in time to 2011.
- Download MATLAB R2011a from PirateBay.
- ./run