MATLAB wont start on Linux. It did yesterday.

I use MATLAB on Linux every day. It wouldn't start this morning, reporting a memory problem. I rebooted which didn't fix anything. I then updated to R2024a (I was on R2023b) and still it wont start. Here's what I see when I run it from the command line:

$ matlab
MATLAB is selecting SOFTWARE rendering.
library initialization failed - unable to allocate file descriptor table - out of memory
MATLAB is exiting because of fatal error
Killed

$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           31531        4149       23394          32        4490       27381
Swap:            975           0         975

$ uname -a
Linux opsproc3 6.6.13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.6.13-1 (2024-01-20) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Any suggestions as to what the problem might be? I didn't make any changes to my computer.

[dormant]

Here's an update. (I posted the original question before looking at my notes.)

As root, I tried to free some memory with this command:

$ echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory

I then ran matlab from the command line and got these messages:

$ matlab
MATLAB is selecting SOFTWARE rendering.
MESA-LOADER: failed to open nouveau: /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory (search paths /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri:\$${ORIGIN}/dri:/usr/lib/dri, suffix _dri)
MESA-LOADER: failed to open kms_swrast: /usr/lib/dri/kms_swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory (search paths /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri:\$${ORIGIN}/dri:/usr/lib/dri, suffix _dri)
MESA-LOADER: failed to open swrast: /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory (search paths /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri:\$${ORIGIN}/dri:/usr/lib/dri, suffix _dri)

The MATLAB window then opened, but does not give me the prompt in the command window (10 minutes so far).

[dormant]

Update 2. I got the >> prompt in the command window after about 20 minutes.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

See the FAQ: https://matlab.fandom.com/wiki/FAQ#After_installation,_MATLAB_crashes_or_gives_an_error_message_when_I_try_to_run_MATLAB.

If you do what it says in there, it should solve it.

[dormant]

Many thanks. I'll contact support as suggested in the FAQ.