Why do I get the message "xsetup: Permission denied" when running the installer on Linux/Unix?

Solution:

This error may indicate that you do not have permissions to run the installer. If you are installing from downloaded files, run the following command to reset file permissions:

chmod -R 755 $MATLABDOWNLOADS

(where $MATLABDOWNLOADS is the directory containing all the downloaded product files)

If you are installing from the MATLAB DVD or CD, it could be that the DVD or CD hasn't been mounted with permission to execute scripts. This is typical in distributions that automatically mount DVD's and CD's. In that case, see the solution below to resolve this issue:

1) Find the name of your DVD/CD device and check for 'noexec' permissions

To start, you will need to know the name of your device. This can be done by running the command:

mount

You should see a list of all devices that are mounted, the paths where they are mounted, and the device names. You should see the MATLAB installation media listed (generally it will have "MATHWORKS_" in the mount path). If you see 'noexec' next to the MathWorks media, this indicates that it has been mounted as read only.

NOTE: If you receive a message that the device is busy, change directories in your terminal so that you are not on the media path (ex: cd ~)

3) Re-mount the device with the executable bit set:

Next, you can remount the device with the execute bit set.

mount -o remount,exec $DEVICE 

Where $DEVICE is the name of the device that you found in step 1. For example:

mount -o remount,exec /dev/dvdrom 

Once complete, you should be able to launch the installer.