How to use a Windows 7 MATLAB client on a Ubuntu based MATLAB cluster?

I am running MATLAB R2013a on a Windows 7 computer and I am trying to connect to a MATLAB beowulf cluster using MATLAB R2013a and the MATLAB Job Scheduler (MJS) running on a Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS system.

Win7 MATLAB discovers and adds the cluster to my cluster profiles. Using the validation tests, it passes the first four tests, but fails the last test, "MATLAB pool test (matlabpool)". Typing "matlabpool open" in the command window results in the same error given during the validation test which is:

Error using matlabpool (line 144)
Failed to open matlabpool. (For information in addition to the causing error, validate the
profile 'MJSProfile1' in the Cluster Profile Manager.)

Caused by:
    Error using parallel.internal.pool.InteractiveClient>iThrowIfBadParallelJobStatus
    (line 780)
    The interactive communicating job errored with the following message:
    MatlabPoolPeerInstance{fUuid=f28f24f8-c8bd-4c09-ac4a-19d1dec8e9dd,
    fGroupUuid=5451eae9-8043-4ada-a10c-92085c32827b, fLabIndex=1, fNumberOfLabs=8} was
    unable find the host for bowser:27371 due to a JVM UnknownHostException: null

Note that "bowser" is the hostname of the Windows 7 machine I am running MATLAB on.

I can successfully connect to, and use, the cluster from other machines using Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS without any problems.

Why am I getting this error and what can I do to correct it?

[David]

If you log on to a host in the cluster, does the name 'bowser' resolve to the IP address of the Windows machine? (try using "nslookup bowser", "ping bowser" etc.)

If not, check your DNS settings on the cluster node, to use the correct domain name or search domain settings for your network.

You could also try temporarily adding bowser and its IP address to /etc/hosts on the cluster node.

It might help to have a special test MJS instance with just a single worker on a single node when testing, so you do not have to make the changes to all cluster nodes when troubleshooting.

Answer 1

[Raymond Norris]

The issue may be that the Linux cluster can't resolve bowser. Run the following before validation

pctconfig('hostname','<ip-address-of-bowser>');

If this works, then you'll need to be run it each time your start MATLAB before calling any PCT functions (matlabpool, parfor, etc.).

If it doesn't work, contact MathWorks Technical Support (<mailto:[e-mail] [e-mail]>) and they can help troubleshoot it.

[John]

I tried running the command, I typed:

pctconfig('bowser','184.130.14.108');

but this resulted in the following error message:

Error using pctconfig>iArgCheck (line 92)
Unrecognized parameter: bowser.

Error in pctconfig (line 51)
    [params, values] = iArgCheck(params, values, stored_config, stored_undoc);

I'm unsure why this occurs.

[José-Luis]

 pctconfig('hostname','184.130.14.108');