MATLAB hangs on opening, Pop OS 20.10

Programming Help
1

Hello all,

I am not optimistic that I will find an answer since this is more of a Matlab issue than a PTB one, but I have an experiment running in about 16 hours that depends on finding an answer. Matlab appears to be freezing shortly after opening the GUI. I am running Pop OS version 20.10 with all of the latest updates to the best of my knowledge. My best theory as to why I am having issues is because some update just installed that has bricked Matlab.

Description of the problem: Regardless of whether I open it using the “Show Applications” screen, using the terminal, etc., Matlab appears to freeze after loading. It brings up the standard loading screen and shows the full command window/workspace/user interface. If I look in the bottom left corner of the window, it switches from “Initializing” to “Ready”. However, MATLAB does not accept any key presses into the command window, nor can I interact with any of the on-screen buttons (e.g. “Open”, “New script”). In fact, the “New” and “Open” buttons remain grayed out.

What triggered the problem: Restarting the laptop?

What I have attempted since then:

  • Running ptb3-matlab. No change in behavior compared to standard “matlab” command
  • Running Matlab from the command line with the following flags (and combinations thereof): -nodesktop, -softwareopengl. No changes in behavior
  • Running Matlab with -logfile flag. The resulting output shows the standard “Welcome to MATLAB” text and nothing else.

Thanks all

2

have you tried
matlab -nodesktop
?

If that works at least you can run

3

Try to [re]install matlab-support if pop-os has it (ubuntu does so I suppose pop-os will too):

sudo apt purge matlab-support
sudo apt install matlab-support
4

Sounds like one of these cases where priority support might have helped if your lab had taken the clue from a previous conversation and bought any in time. My first and last tiny bit of free advice:

There’s always octave as a high quality alternative, only a sudo apt install octave-psychtoolbox-3 away if you use Neurodebian or a Debian based distribution.

Or maybe upgrading or downgrading Matlab, or Mathworks support, as this clearly sounds like a Matlab bug or compatibility/configuration issue.

-mario

5

I figured an update was in order, despite the fact that I did nothing to fix the issue.

Pop OS has since updated to 21.04 and the hanging issue seems to have disappeared. If I encounter the issue again I will update.