Why does a segmentation violation occur when I attempt to start MATLAB 6.1 (R12.1) or MATLAB 7.0 (R14) without a HOME variable set on Solaris or Linux?

If I attempt to start MATLAB 6.1 (R12.1) or MATLAB 7.0 (R14) on Solaris or Linux without the HOME variable set, MATLAB crashes during startup.

In MATLAB 6.1 (R12.1), the resulting stack trace begins with the following:

 [0] libc.so.1:strlen~(0xffbfc7c8, 0, 0x0007a72c "matlab.prf", 0xfeeaffa8) + 128 bytes

   [1] matlab:fiSaveFcn~(0, 0xffbfd7bc, 597292, 0x000eef50 "getpref") + 3612 bytes

 <snip>

In MATLAB 7.0 (R14), the stack trace begins with the following:

 [0] libc.so.1:strlen~(0xff20be8c, 0, 0xff1ecf21 "toolbox_cache-7.0.0-sol2.xml", 0xff207a98) + 128 bytes

   [1] libmwservices.so:svGetToolboxCacheFile(0, 3560, 0x7ffffc00, 0xff207a98) + 64 bytes

 <snip>

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This bug has been fixed in Release 14 Service Pack 3 (R14SP3). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:

There is a bug in MATLAB 6.1 (R12.1) and MATLAB 7.0 (R14) in the way that MATLAB interacts with the operating system when the HOME environment variable is unset.

To work around this issue, ensure that the HOME environment variable is set to a non-null value before starting MATLAB.