Issue with MATLAB install: ibmwfounda​tion_crash​_handling.​so: cannot enable executable stack as shared object requires: Invalid argument: Success: Success

Hey everyone!

I recently came across a bug on ArchLinux when using MATLAB. Since some time (about last week or 2 weeks ago), everytime I try and startup MATLAB (either from cmd, or application shortcut) I get the following error:

Command `service` threw an exception
Error loading /home/timey/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2025.1.1.2/bin/glnxa64/mathworksservicehost/rcf/matlabconnector/serviceprocess/rcf/service/libmwmshrcfservice.so. libmwfoundation_crash_handling.so: cannot enable executable stack as shared object requires: Invalid argument: Success: Success

I have tried uninstalling (deleting all matlab files from my system) and reinstalling, but nothing works. People in my class had similar problems, and switching to R2025 prerelease seemed to help, however, fro me that is not possible since the install script does not work.

Some additional information about my system:

Kernel: Linux 6.13.3-arch1-1

Host: HP Laptop 15-fc0xxx

OS: Arch Linux x86_64

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7730U (16) @ 4.55 GHz

GPU: AMD Barcelo [Integrated]

Memory: 6.14 GiB / 14.97 GiB (41%)

Any help / pointers to a solution would be greatly appreciated! :)

Thank you for reading!

Answer 1

[Timur]

I will post the answer I got from the MathWorks team as the official answer to this problem:

Please know that Arch Linux is not a qualified Linux distro, so MATLAB might or might not run and the developers won't release any hot fix unless this policy changes otherwise in the future.

MATLAB R2024b System Requirements for Linux

https://www.mathworks.com/support/requirements/matlab-linux.html

However, this issue is acknowledged, the error occurred due to the GNU 2.41 (which was recently released) on Arch Linux and there is a fix for it, if you look at some sites such as Arch Wiki.

This command was from such site, please try:

execstack -c /home/ash/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2025.1.1.2/bin/glnxa64/mathworksservicehost/rcf/matlabconnector/serviceprocess/rcf/service/libmwmshrcfservice.so

Then, relaunch MATLAB, if not working, try rebooting the machine.

If it still does not work, I suggest seeking further help from the Arch community, since I won't be able to assist you with this issue ):

Additionally, what originally worked for me was the workaround first posted by @Phillip, which you can find here.

A huge thank you to anyone involved! Lets hope this problem doesn't happen anymore with the release of 2025a :)

[Simon]

execstack is deprecated and is not available in Debian 12. Is there any alternative solution?

[Timur]

Can you use patchelf? Its also mentioned in the solution. The details are in the forum post linked. Other than that, I dont really know anything about debian, so I wont be of much help :(

Answer 2

[Raymond Norris]

Hi @Timur please contact MathWorks Technical Support to see if this can be resolved.

[Phillip]

Dude could you please talk to them, lots of people including myself have this issue (500+ views).

With the utmost respect, this forum should be monitored, because this is the first link that comes up in google for this issue.

Perhaps we should just increase the package support on octave?

Octave doesn't crash because MATLAB trys to call home every time you open the application.

[Raymond Norris]

@Phillip for an issue like this, it's best if individuals contact MathWorks Technical Support directly. A help ticket gets created and the individual will get a quicker response, which will be based on their environment (OS, libraries, MATLAB version etc.).

[Phillip]

@Timur

There is a work around, just tested it

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=303177

TL;DR install patchelf, its due to linker & executable stack issues with glibc and the fact that the compilation process isn't manually handling it

Replace bold with your details

then sudo patchelf --clear-execstack /home/user/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2025.1.1.2/bin/glnxa64/libmwfoundation_crash_handling.so

sudo patchelf --clear-execstack /home/user/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2025.1.1.2/bin/glnxa64/mathworksservicehost/rcf/matlabconnector/serviceprocess/rcf/service/libmwmshrcfservice.so

[Lukas]

@Phillip

This worked, but I had to set my user path to "/root/" instead of "/home/user" in order to install my license. Thank you so much!

[Raymond Norris]

Hi @Timur please contact me directly and I'll find out what's going on with your ticket.

[Timur]

Hey @Raymond Norris, I just found the response, it landed in spam a while ago. Apologies for the mistake, will delete my response :). Thank you for the help!

Answer 3

[Sergio]

I have the same problem in Arch Linux

Answer 4

[彬迅]

Me too!

[彬迅]

this is my fastfetch

❯ fastfetch

admin@admin-X

OS: Garuda Linux x86_64

Host: ASUS TUF Gaming A16 FA607PI_FA607PI (1.0)

Kernel: Linux 6.13.4-zen1-1-zen

Uptime: 47 mins

Packages: 1980 (pacman)[stable], 6 (flatpak)

Shell: zsh 5.9

Display (B160QAN02.7 ): 2560x1600 @ 165 Hz (as 2048x1280) in 16" [Built-]

DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.2

WM: KWin (Wayland)

WM Theme: Sweet-Dark-transparent

Theme: Dr460nized# (Sweet) [Qt], Sweet-Dark [GTK2/3/4]

Icons: BeautyLine [Qt], BeautyLine [GTK2/3/4]

Font: Maple Mono NF CN Medium (10pt, Regular) [Qt], Maple Mono NF CN Med]

Cursor: Bibata-Rainbow-Modern (48px)

Terminal: konsole 24.12.2

Terminal Font: Maple Mono NF CN (12pt)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (32) @ 5.31 GHz

GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Max-Q / Mobile [Discrete]

GPU 2: AMD Radeon 610M [Integrated]

Memory: 6.20 GiB / 30.56 GiB (20%)

Swap: 26.48 MiB / 30.56 GiB (0%)

Disk (/): 46.84 GiB / 150.00 GiB (31%) - btrfs

Disk (/home): 147.31 GiB / 350.00 GiB (42%) - btrfs

Disk (/home/admin/Windows_D_Dir): 138.75 GiB / 250.00 GiB (55%) - fuseblk

Local IP (ppp0): 10.194.203.8/32

Battery (GA50358): 90% [AC Connected]

Locale: zh_CN.UTF-8

[Sergio]

I found a solution that worked for me. The answer from LyCC on the Arch Linux forum solved my issue.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=303177

[彬迅]

thank you! this is work!

[Calum]

For me, the issue manifests as "ERROR 5201", and does not give those additional logging details about which libraries are impacted; I had to dive into the service host log files for that.

Answer 5

[Norm]

The solution provided fixes the problem for a single user.

Same with the solution in section 3.35 in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MATLAB

My system has many users. Is there a solution for all users on the system?

Does R2025a fix the problem?

I'm using Fedora 42 updated to glibc-2.41-5.fc42.x86_64

Thanks!

[Calum]

The Arch docs imply that R2025a fixes this, which seems likely. To solve the issue for all users on the system, you can run as root

execstack -c /home/*/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/*/bin/glnxa64/libmwfoundation_crash_handling.so

If you need to handle routinely adding new users, and/or make this solution last through an update to the service host, you can add that command to some of the various scripts which are run when new users are created. Or even just make it a cron job/systemd timer.

I suppose you can also globally change the override tunable glibc.rtld.execstack to be 2, force-enabling an executable stack. This is definitely not great for security, though.