MATLAB FAQ

MATLAB on Cosmos

The Itanium2/Linux platform is not supported on cosmos by Mathworks. The MATLAB installations on cosmos are 32-bit x86/Linux software which leverage the 32-bit emulation software on cosmos.

MATLAB on Hydra

MATLAB is only functional from the login nodes on hydra. Hydra's compute nodes cannot contact the TAMU license server for MATLAB.

Recommended Command Line for Starting Matlab

The recommended command line for Matlab is:

matlab -nodesktop -nojvm -nosplash

These options will disable the Java desktop, Java virtual machine, and the splash pop-up window when starting Matlab.

The MATLAB Desktop

Note, the MATLAB desktop cannot be used on agave and hydra. MATLAB's Java, which is required by the desktop feature, is incompatible with AIX, which runs on agave and hydra.

The Java-based MATLAB Desktop has been disabled by default due to its instability when run on a SC compute server and displaying on a local computer. If you require the desktop, you should use the following command:

matlab -desktop

Use Caveats and Practices

1. Interactive use is appropriate only for small jobs.
2. All non-trivial jobs should be executed in batch mode.
3. PLEASE DO NOT run multiple matlab sessions concurrently. Doing so may well prevent someone else from running MATLAB because of the limited number of license tokens available.
4. Always end you MATLAB sessions by issuing a "quit"
5. Avoid running MATLAB with the "desktop" feature on. This will slow you and everybody else down. There is very little that you cannot do without it. The reason for this effect is because the "desktop" feature takes up a lot of memory. At the end of this section, we illustrate an efficient way to invoke MATLAB. The Matlab desktop feature is disabled by default but may be enabled with the -desktop flag.

Documentation

Batch mode help

The instructions for using Matlab in batch mode are available in the manual pages. The manual pages for Matlab can be accessed after setting up your Matlab environment by typing the following command:

man matlab