Matlab 2011b and Xilinx 13.4 on Ubuntu Server

Just a couple quick notes on some issues I ran in to installing Xilinx and Matlab on Ubuntu server:

• Matlab needs the package "default-jre" or else the installer fails with some cryptic error message.


• You need to run "sudo ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 /lib64/libc.so.6" after you install Matlab on a 64 bit machine to avoid the launch error "./matlab: 1: /usr/local/MATLAB/R2011b/bin/util/oscheck.sh: /lib64/libc.so.6: not found".


• Xilinx doesn't like newer versions of glibc (segfaults and memory dumps), so I had problems running it on Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10. I reverted to 11.10 and it worked fine.


• Xilinx installed fine, and even seemed to run okay, but had weird GUI issues (e.g., no "Open Project" option in the file menu of XPS) without the full ubuntu-desktop package installed. It probably doesn't need every package, but I didn't care enough to figure out the exact dependencies that were causing the problem.

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Update:  

• I think the missing package (which simulink also complains about) is "libglu1-mesa" rather than installing the whole ubuntu-desktop package.


• I got the error "/usr/local/Xilinx/14.4/ISE_DS/ISE/sysgen/util/sysgen: 82: /usr/local/Xilinx/14.4/ISE_DS/ISE/sysgen/util/sysgen: Syntax error: "(" unexpected", which was resolved by editing that sysgen run script to use bash("#!/bin/bash") rather than sh (or changing sh to link to bash rather than dash in /bin).


• I wanted to run sysgen from a build script, but it had trouble passing the -r argument to matlab (actually, it would run one command, but not exit, since it is actually using the -r switch itself...).  To keep the Xilinx Blockset in matlab without running sysgen directly, first run sysgen, then do a "savepath" in matlab.  Now when you run matlab (assuming you have run "source /usr/local/Xilinx/14.4/ISE_DS/settings64.sh ") you can get to all the sysgen stuff. 


• I also needed to do this.