MATLAB: Do I receive a “/lib/libc.so.6: Permission denied” error when starting MATLAB on Linux

Question

When starting MATLAB, I receive the following error:

 /usr/local/bin/matlab: line 1: /lib/libc.so.6: Permission denied

MATLAB then starts up successfully.

Answer 1

When MATLAB starts, it runs /lib/libc.so.6 to obtain library information. If /lib/libc.so.6 does not have execute permissions, then you will receive a "Permission Denied" message at startup. To correct this, make sure that /lib/libc.so.6 has execute permissions. To check, run the following command in the /lib directory

 ls -l

The libc.so.6 should have the following permissions:

 lrwxrwxrwx

and the libc-2.2.5.so that it points to should have the following permissions:

 -rwxr-xr-x

or

 -rwxrwxrwx

If the libc-2.2.5.so does not have the correct permissions, run the following command as root:

 chmod 755 libc.so.6