Annoying Matlab start-up warnings on Mac: " ... MATLAB_maci64 ... attempting to exclude an item from Time Machine ..."

Mac OS X version 10.7.1 (Lion) Matlab version 7.13.0.564 (R2011b) I keep getting this message: "MATLAB_maci64[5492:a807] This process is attempting to exclude an item from Time Machine by path without administrator privileges. This is not supported." , which disturbs my work in a command line mode very much.

Does anyone know how to avoid the attempt or suppress the warning message?

[Micah]

I have the same problem, and have searched the interwebs for answers, none of which have worked. I also get the error like 100 or 200 times when compiling a matlab project. Mac OSX Lion and R2011b as well.

[Y Huang]

Micah, I did this:

> sudo matlab

and solved problem.

[Robert]

I did the same just now:

   *sudo /Applications/MATLAB_R2011b.app/bin/matlab -nojvm*

prompted for password and the problem appears to have gone away. Probably with su priv the file that needed to be excluded got excluded and the exclusion has stuck now.

;-D

Answer 1

[Jan]

Did you try to run the compiler once as root by sudo as described here:

<http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/showthread.php?t=85145&o=d&s=lr>

?

[Y Huang]

This worked for me. Thanks, Jan!

Micah, I did this:

> sudo matlab

Hope it works for you as well.

[Johan]

Running it once as sudo fixed it for me!

sudo /Applications/MATLAB_R2012b.app/bin/matlab -nosplash -nodesktop

Now I can run it as a normal user without getting the messages!

Answer 2

[Ken Atwell]

This message is seen only on Lion, and impacts all versions of MATLAB. There are no known effects other than the noisiness in the command window (which means users that launch MATLAB from the Dock or Applications folder will likely never notice this). We are indeed waiting on one of our vendors.

For the time being, you can just ignore the messages or run with elevated privilege as suggested above. Messily, you could also filter out the message (which is written to stderr). Something like:

matlab 2>&1 | grep -v "exclude an item from Time Machine"

or

 matlab |& grep -v "exclude an item from Time Machine"

depending on the shell you use.

Answer 3

[Andreas Goser]

This issue has been reported to MathWorks by a few users. The techncial document (1-F6GRLV) is not published on the web. There is no workaround described, so unfortunately, I can't help you. There is also a dependency on an other software vendor, which means MathWorks can't fix this on its own.

[Andreas Goser]

It is great to see workarounds / mitigations here. I also like to point out, that there is no indication, that these messages cause any other issues beside the inconvenience.

Answer 4

[Joseph Areeda]

"there is no indication, that these messages cause any other issues beside the inconvenience."

Well there is also the bug reports from users of your code if you distribute it.

But at least I now have a thread to refer them to.

And I implemented Ken's grep -v suggestion. Thank you Ken!