See also Getting Started with MATLAB at MCSR, Part I , Getting Started with MATLAB at MCSR, Part II, and MATLAB at UM/MCSR

Matlab may be run in X Windows mode, or command-line mode, on both MCSR/UM systems that host it: sweetgum and willow. This article tells how to setup the environment on each system for command-line Matlab. Setup for X Windows (graphical) mode will be discussed in a later article.

 

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Willow Setup for Matlab

 

Before running Matlab on willow, you might need to ensure that your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable includes this directory: /ptmp/studio8/SUNWspro/lib/. Confirm this by typing:

 

echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH

 

at the command prompt. If this directory is not included, you’ll need to update the path variable in one of two possible ways. If you are using one of the sh/bash/ksh family of shells:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/ptmp/studio8/SUNWspro/lib/

or, if you are using one of the csh/tcsh family of shells:

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/ptmp/studio8/SUNWspro/lib/

 

If you aren’t sure which shell you are running, type:
echo $SHELL

 

Once your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable is set correctly, you can continue.

Matlab Setup on Sweetgum

 

On sweetgum, you don’t need to worry about the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable, but you do need to worry about the DISPLAY variable, if you intend to run MATLAB via the command-line interface (as opposed to the graphical, X-Windows interface, which is beyond the scope of this article.) If you attempt to start MATLAB on sweetgum, and get an error message kind of like this:

 

X connection to sweetgum:16.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

 

then this means sweetgum is trying to launch Matlab in X-Windows mode. To force it into command-line mode, you first need to unset the DISPLAY variable, like this:

 

unset DISPLAY