MATLAB: How to easily install the own custom toolbox on the workers in a MATLAB Distributed Computing Server 4.1 (R2009a) environment

Question

I have created my own toolbox which I want to make available to all workers on my Parallel Computing cluster. I am able to get this working if the script being executed on the workers starts with the following line:

addpath \\server\share\to\toolbox

or if I set the correct 'PathDependencies'.

However, I would like all workers to be able to use the functions from my toolbox without having to do this, i.e. just like with any normal MathWorks toolbox which work out-of-the-box.

Is there any way this can be done?

Answer 1

For the toolbox to be available to all workers, the command

addpath \\server\share\to\toolbox

should be automatically executed on all workers. To accomplish this, please edit the script file:

 $MATLABROOT\toolbox\local\matlabrc.m

This script is automatically run when a worker starts. You can simply add the above mentioned line to this script file.

Please note though, on Windows by default MATLAB workers are executed under the SYSTEM account; depending on your network configuration this account might not have sufficient rights to access your toolbox when it is located on a network share. To resolve this issue you could change the account under which the "MATLAB Distributed Computing Server" service is run.