Fedora 42 - Unable to launch MVM server: License Error: Licensing shutdown

I installed Matlab 2025a on Fedora 42 (which is not in the official list of supported OSes but still, RHEL is) but when opening Matlab and logging in, it crashes with the error:

Unable to communicate with required MathWorks services (error 5201).

For help with this issue, contact support: 
https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html


Unable to launch MVM server: License Error: Licensing shutdown

Matlab support cut me off with "Fedora isn't supported", so we are not helping.

Are there any solutions? How do I lauch the MVM server?

Thanks

Answer 1

[Viktor]

The solution turned out to be run manually

InstallMathWorksServiceHost

as the local which lives in ~/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2025.5.1.1/mci/bin/glnxa64 (obviously, the version might be different).

This discussion got me on the right way https://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2176458-failed-to-run-matlab-gui-in-fedora-42 although the location of the installer has changed in 2025a.

[Samantha]

Same issue on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. I had to start the service host manually. Surprising, considering this is supposed to be a validated distribution.

[Rubén]

Same issue on ubunto 20.04. Unable to run InstallMathWorksServiceHost "An unexpected error has occurred. To resolve this issue, contact Technical Support."

I tried also to reinstall MATLAB and reinstall MathWorks Service Host (https://es.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1815365-how-do-i-uninstall-and-reinstall-the-mathworks-service-host)

[Brandon]

Thank you OP! I had the same issue and this resolved it!

[Leandro]

Same here on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed!

[Jayden]

For anyone on fedora 42, run both the InstallMathWorksServiceHost and InstallMathWorksServiceHost.sh in terminal with sudo, one at a time. Matlab refused to work until i installed both. Really hoping this is resolved properly in future releases.

[Kevin Tan]

Had this issue on a clean install of Ubuntu 25.04

Fixed by running InstallMathWorksServiceHost on my user account (NOT sudo)... I initially tried running it in sudo but it wanted to create root-owned files & folders in my user home dir (~/), which would be bad (e.g. stupid Matlab drive dir)

[Itumeleng]

I'm using Linux gentoo, and had the same issue on a clean install of Ubuntu 25.04 , this also fixed my problem.

~/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2025.2.2.1/mci/bin/glnxa64 $ ./InstallMathWorksServiceHost

[Arturo]

I can confirm that on Debian 13, manually installing Mathworks' Service Host solved the issue for me, it is worth noting that before I was able to run the installer I had to install libgtk2.0-0; no further troubleshooting was needed.

[Jacopo]

Same for Ubuntu 24.04, clean install, it worked after having installed

libllvm20, libllvm20:i386

and upgraded

libegl-mesa0 libegl-mesa0:i386 libgbm1 libgbm1:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libglx-mesa0 libglx-mesa0:i386 libosmesa6:i386 libxatracker2 mesa-libgallium mesa-libgallium:i386 mesa-va-drivers:i386 mesa-vulkan-drivers

Before installations/upgrades the script InstallMathWorksServiceHost.sh has failed.