My Matlab installer is not download the individual products. What do I do?

Hi, I'm trying to install Matlab 2015a using the installer. I downloaded the installer from the Mathworks site. It's only about 100 MB, so obviously it's supposed to download the actual products after I run the installer. There is no option or link anywhere in plain view in my Mathworks account page that says I need to download the individual product zip files before I run the installer, so I'm assuming the 100MB installer will download everything automatically.

So I run the installer using the -inputFile option on a custom installer input text file. In my input file I see a bunch of lines such as #product.blahblah. These lines are commented out. According to the installer input text file:

"## 1. To automatically install all your licensed products, do not edit
##    any lines in this section."

Okay, so I'm trying to install everything I'm licensed for, so I leave all those lines commented. However, when I try to install, I get the following:

(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) Starting local product/component search in download directory
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) Searching for archives...
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) Reading /usr/local/matlab2015a/archives
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) 2 files found in /usr/local/matlab2015a/archives
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) Reading /usr/local/matlab2015a
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) 16 files found in /usr/local/matlab2015a
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) /root/Downloads/MathWorks/R2015a/archives doesn't exist ... skipping.
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) Archive search complete.  18 total files found.
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:55) Assembling product list...
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:56) Completed local product/component search
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:56) No products are selected. The product lines specified in the input file are invalid. Verify the product list and restart the application.
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:56) Exiting with status -2
(Aug 17, 2015 21:38:56) End - Unsuccessful.

If I'm not mistaking, the installer is complaining that it is not finding any archive files, so there's nothing to install. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

[David]

Hi, I solved this issue a few weeks ago, but forgot to come back here and provide an update until now.

Basically, it turns out that the license that we got (which appears to be a special license given to my university) required us to download the ISO file (which was several gigabytes large) directly from a page at our university, rather than use the installer on the mathworks site. We did that, and it worked fine.

So the lesson here is that at least some Matlab licenses do not work with the ordinary installer. Equivalently, you can also say that the ordinary installer's behavior depends very much on the license key that you put in. However, it would have been very helpful if, instead of simply displaying a blank list of products, the ordinary installer had said something to the effect of "you are using a special license from blah university. That license requires you do download the products in an ISO file directly from your university, which is why you see a blank list of products here. Please contact your university for more information!"

[Sambit Tripathy]

Can you tell us, what you did after downloading the ISO files? Where did you place them? I am in a similar situation where I have the ISO files in a directory called _iso, but I get the same error that you mentioned on doing a silent installation.

[kumar swamy]

HI, i tried placing the iso file in the /Downloads/MathWorks/R2017b/archives location, still the same error. how every i see the count of files during Archive search increased by 2 as i had placed 2 iso images (R2017b_glnxa64_dvd1.iso, R2017b_glnxa64_dvd2.iso).

can you please point the location where the files has to be placed.

Note: i also notices that we have a folder _iso

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

My understanding, possibly wrong, is that when you use the installer that way, you need to have downloaded the archive files. You would be able to get those by running the installer once in interactive mode.

[David]

Hi, this does not appear to be the case (see screenshot below). I'm guessing I should be seeing all the products there. I am using a file installation key and a license.lic file though. Does this mean that either one has no products associated with it?

[Wynn]

I am having the same problem; however, I am using the silent installer for Linux with MATLAB 2015b. I've tried both with and without commenting all the product.blah lines. David, have you been able to resolve this issue? Can anyone else provide a solution?

Thank you for your help.

[David]

Very lucky that I happened to come back to this thread just a day after you posted! see my answer below.

[ISAslot]

I had my product selection list come up blank like in the image above when installing from a network share. I canceled the install and then copied the installation files over to the computer and then ran the installation again and my list populated.