Cannot save preferences and previous paths

Every time I start matlab I get the following:

1) A new release of MATLAB i now available - I choose "Don't show again" - it's always shown again

2) New to Matlab? See resources for getting started - I cancel this and, every time it's shown on startup

3) Matlab doesn't save my previous paths (so my working folder from the last session)

4) It does save my command history

5) It never starts in my last working folder. If I try and specify a starting folder in preferences, it doesn't start in that folder and the preference is gone when I look.

I'm running on Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon. I've gone to the preferences folder (I ran prefdir) and made sure the folder and all files are owned by me and that I have read/write access. This only happens on one of my machines but it's one that I work on a lot and it's getting annoying.

Please help!

Answer 1

[Harsh Saxena]

Hi Chris,

The problem might be occuring due to the way MATLAB is using /tmp directory. Probably because /tmp folder does not belong to the root user. Refer to these posts mentioning a similar issue:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1806255-why-aren-t-my-matlab-preferences-saved-on-linux

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1777865-matlab-preferences-not-being-saved-across-sessions

Personally, I don't have much experience about using MATLAB in linux but I hope this helps!

[Chris Benton]

Thank you! It works - I used the first of the two posts to create an alternative tmp folder. All good.