Matlab and libc.so on 64-bit Linux

This entry was posted by on Wednesday, 31 August, 2011 at

I had Matlab R2009b running on Kubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.10), no problem. I do a dist-upgrade to Natty Narwhal (11.04) and Matlab complains:

~/matlab/bin/util/oscheck.sh: 619: /lib64/libc.so.6: not found

It complains, but otherwise works. If you really want to get rid of this, find out where libc.so.6 resides:

$ locate libc.so
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
/lib32/libc.so.6
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so

So there’s no libc.so.6 where Matlab looks (in the /lib64 directory). Nice. Then we’ll make one in /lib64, like this:

sudo ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 /lib64/libc.so.6

(we’ll simply create a symbolic link to the real file to fool Matlab).

And Matlab stops complaining.

Update on Precise Pangolin – Same problem after the next dist upgrade. However, a side effect is that Matlab’s surf function shows empty plots. I have no clue why but applying the symlink discussed above solved the problem.

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Category: Science, Troubleshooting
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2 Responses to “Matlab and libc.so on 64-bit Linux”

  1. Skidder
    2011-11-28 at 11:26:41

    It’s a library (GNU C library) which contains many of the basics of the C language. I suppose many Matlab functions rely on it so it is pretty vital. But since it still works (and only complains) I suppose the code is all OK, it’s just the oscheck script which looks in the wrong place and then raises false alarm.

  2. gao
    2011-11-26 at 08:22:31

    thanks you for your resolving ,but could you explain the role of the fie libc.so.6?


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