MATLAB docker container login via script?

Hi Team,

Using MATLAB docker image, https://hub.docker.com/r/mathworks/matlab ->

1. We want to learn how to pass user name and password for MATLAB via bash script.
2. Once the container job rub is completed, we want to end the MATLAB session. We are facing below session error when re-running the container probably as the session has not ended in previous run.

ERROR:

License Manager Error -4

Maximum number of users for MATLAB reached. Try again later

[Winston Yu]

Shyamal:

There are several options to run docker, like if you are using

docker run -it --rm -p 8888:8888 --shm-size=512M mathworks/matlab:r2022a -browser

This method won't ask for any password, and you need to open a browser to access the MATLAB through a webpage, can you tell me how you run the docker image? Are you using batch? A screenshot of your command and error message will be helpful.

[Shyamal Agarwal]

Hi Yu,

Thanks for your response. We are currently building on top of MATLAB container with additional tools and libraries layers. We would be invoking matlab command directly via bash script in the docker container.

root@54f54c3d694c:/data# matlab

MATLAB is selecting SOFTWARE OPENGL rendering.

Please enter your MathWorks Account email address and press Enter:

[e-mail]

Please enter your MathWorks Account password and press Enter:

Starting MATLAB with license:

Instead we want to pass credentials while invoking MATLAB, for ex:

matlab --credentials=credentials.txt

or

matlab --username=xxxx --password=xxxx

Situation 2, matlab session is not disconnected when we exit from MATLAB program, ex:

>> exit

root@54f54c3d694c:/data# matlab

MATLAB is selecting SOFTWARE OPENGL rendering.

Starting MATLAB with license: 10314731 - MathWorks Trial - 27 May 2022

So what happens is, once we kill the container and re-run a new container, since old session was never ended, we are not able to logon with the following error:

ERROR:

License Manager Error -4

Maximum number of users for MATLAB reached. Try again later

[Mauro]

Hey, same problem here. Did you find a solution?

Answer 1

[Dheeraj]

Hi Shyamal Agarwal,

I understand you want to launch MATLAB docker container non-interactively.

By default MATLAB container is configured to use Online Licensing so if you have an individual license or your organization is setup to use Online Licensing it prompts to enter your MathWorks Account username and password.

Online Licensing isn't always an option and in some cases isn't a desired workflow. Instead you can use run the container using license server instead.

You can specify the license server you want the container to acquire licenses from by passing an environment variable with the "-e" option when you launch a container. This will set up an environment variable within the container. MATLAB conveniently looks for MLM_LICENSE_FILE when starting and will use it for license authentication.

docker run -it --rm -e MLM_LICENSE_FILE=27000@<IP of your License server> mathworks/matlab

To know more about how to use MATLAB docker image and its reference architecture along with the configurations available, you could go refer to the below URL.

https://github.com/mathworks-ref-arch/getting-started-with-matlab-in-docker?tab=readme-ov-file#run-a-container

To know more about how to create custom MATLAB docker container you could refer to the below MATLAB's documentation.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/cloudcenter/ug/create-a-custom-matlab-container.html#mw_c115e63b-53f6-4630-b0b8-a9012bb6a44a