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Matlab

Note that we are not expert in Matlab: feel free to contact Mathworks support directly if you are having any issues with their official Docker image. Because since it's closed source we cannot fix it ourselves.

You can request official support from Matlab at this address after login and connecting your account to the UM license: https://nl.mathworks.com/academia/tah-portal/maastricht-university-31574866.html#get

Use the official Matlab image​

Start Matlab with a desktop UI accessible directly using your web browser at a URL automatically generated.

Go to the Catalog, make sure Templates are displayed (box checked), and search for Matlab, and provide the right parameters:

  • You will need to provide the password you will use to access the Matlab UI when filling the template. Ensure to use a password length greater than 6.
  • You can also change the Matlab image version, see the latest version released in the official Matlab Docker image documentation

Once Matlab start you can access it through 2 routes (URL), which can be accessed when clicking on the Matlab node in the Topology:

  • The main matlab route to access Matlab desktop UI directly in your web browser. It is recommended to use this route.
  • The matlab-vnc route can be used to access Matlab using a VNC client (you will need to use the full URL to your Matlab VNC route). Only use it if you know what you're doing.

Use a stable Matlab image​

The official Matlab image is infamous for showing a black screening after a few hours of use, making it a bit cumbersome to be used trustfully.

We have a solution if you need to have a more stable Matlab image, that will require a bit more manual operations:

  • Use the Ubuntu with GUI template to setup a Ubuntu pod on the DSRI with the image ghcr.io/vemonet/docker-ubuntu-vnc-desktop:latest
  • Start firefox and browse to https://nl.mathworks.com
  • Login with your personal Matlab account, create one if you don’t have it
  • Choose get matlab and download, the linux matlab version
  • Open a terminal window and run the following commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unzip
# Unzip the previous downloaded matlab installation file
# start the matlab installation with:
sudo ./install

You will then be prompted the Matlab installation process:

  • Fill in your personal matlab account credentials
  • ⚠️ Fill in the username as used in the Ubuntu environment, in your case it will most probably be root (Matlab gives a license error if this is not correct, check with whoami in the terminal when in doubt)
  • Select every Matlab modules you want to be installed
  • Check "symbolic link" and "Improve……"

Use Matlab in Jupyter​

For running Matlab in Jupyter, you need to first install the matlab on your Jupyter pod. if you need assistance ask the DSRI admins

Deploy Matlab on GPU​

We use the Matlab template in the DSRI catalog to deploy a pre-built Nvidia Matlab Deep Learning Container on CPU or GPU nodes. See the official documentation from MathWorks for more details about this image.

Request access to Matlab

To be able to access the Matlab on GPU template you will need to ask the DSRI admins to enable it in your project.

2 options are available to connect to your running Matlab pod terminal:

  • Go to the matlab pod page on the DSRI web UI
  • Or connect from your terminal with oc rsh MATLAB_POD_ID

Type bash when first accessing to the terminal to have a better experience.

Type cd /ContainerDeepLearningData to go in the persistent volume, and use this volume to store all data that should be preserved.

Type matlab to access Matlab from the terminal

It is possible to access the Matlab desktop UI through VNC and a web UI, but the script to start it in /bin/run.sh seems to face some errors, let us know if you have any luck with this.

By default the image run with the matlab user which does not have sudo privilege, you can run the container as root if you need to install packages which require admin privileges.