Why do I get an error loading shared libraries libXpm.so.4 when starting MATLAB on Linux?

When trying to start MATLAB I get the following error:

error while loading shared libraries: libXpm.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

How do I start MATLAB?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This error indicates that you are missing at least one of the libraries that MATLAB relies on to start. MATLAB does require X Server libraries installed on the machine in order to run MATLAB. If you are installing the network license manager only, you can use silent installation (see the related solution below).

If you are on a Debian based Linux disto, you can install this missing library and several other dependencies by running the following:

sudo apt-get install xorg

For Red-Hat based Linux distros, you can use the yum package tool.

yum list | grep -i xorg-x11-libs

For more information about installing these packages, plese refer to your operating system documentation.