Is it safe to delete the node-specific folders under ~/.MathWor​ks/Service​Host/ on Linux?

I am using MATLAB R2024 on a Linux environment, and I noticed that folders are being created under the path ~/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/, one for each node I run, and each folder is consuming a significant amount of disk space. Is it safe to delete these folders? If not, is there a way to reduce the disk space usage?

Answer 1

[Angelo Yeo]

Hi Dong Hyuk,

(1) If you delete the MathWorks Service Host folders, it will reinstall them when it's launched.

(2) Is the storage size your only concern? How does it affect your workflow?

(3) What version of service host do you use? Starting with MathWorks Service Host v2024.6.0.6, the size of the Service Host directory does not scale up when the user's home directory is shared across multiple hosts. All hosts will utilize the same shared directory of the MathWorks Service Host without creating a new unique installation for each host. See the official answer below.

Why does MATLAB R2021b or newer create a large directory of data for each user in ~/.MathWorks, %localappdata%\MathWorks, or ... - MATLAB Answers - MATLAB Central

(4) Please reach out to Installation Support team for issues related to the MathWorks Service Host.

Contact Support

https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html

[Paul]

We have a 1000+ user academic site with Linux cluster where user home directories are on volume where each user has a 5GB quota. This creation of a hidden subdirectories of this size in user home dirs of this size is really a violation of excepted norms for the use of Linux home directories. This is even true for ~/.matlab which also gets into multiple gigabytes for some users. No application should need such "auto-generated" customization per user of such extreme size. This is just quite frankly a terrible and inefficient design flaw in the software development.

I have discovered if I create a root a ~/.MathWorks directory in a user's home dir they cannot write to it spits out a error about it being unwritable but Matlab still loads and seems to work fine in -nodisplay mode.

[Walter Roberson]

I agree that a gigabyte "customization" folder does not make sense.