DAMTP Computing News

The new SL3 setup provides a new posix thread implementation (called tls), which requires kernel and library support.

Parts of the existing matlab installations don't work with the tls libraries because they were compiled against previous versions of libraries. In particular the "Symbolic Toolbox" contains a version of the Maple-8 kernel which Mathworks can't easily fix themselves.

Attempting to use that component, will result in odd errors like:

     Invalid MEX-file ....
     .../glnx86/libmaple.so: symbol ... libc.so.6 with link time reference.

Older versions of Matlab are also more likely to have other components which fail to work (or work properly) with the newer libraries.

Users can disable tls by setting LD_ASSUME_KERNEL to an appropriate level (I find that 2.4.19 is fine), but to make things slightly easier we have modified the matlab wrapper scripts to allow a new command-line option "-notls".

The scripts for Matlab versions 6.0, 6.1, 6.5 and 7.0.1 have been modified, so you can start up matlab as (for example):

     matlab701 -nojvm -nosplash -notls
     matlab65  -nojvm -nosplash -notls
     matlab    -nojvm -nosplash -notls

The -notls option will have no effect (other than printing a warning) on RH8 machines (which don't have tls). See the mathworks technical support/solutions page at http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/data/1-1BDU5.html more info.