Why does the Update Installer fail with either no clear error message shown or with "File on disk does not match expected meta data" in the log file?

When trying to install an update with a standalone installer, the installation process terminates with the message:

Installation failed [1]

Or if I open the installation log file, there are lines reading with

Warning: File on disk does not match expected meta data

How can I resolve this?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This usually means that the file being looked at was modified. There are a few recommended solutions to try:

1. Uninstalling and reinstalling the affected products and then apply the update to a clean installation.
2. Running the update as an administrator.
3. Disabling any antivirus software.
4. Uninstalling and reinstalling MATLAB and of its products with administrative privileges, antivirus software disabled, and then attempting the update once more.

[Royi Avital]

Reinstalling is a mess. Any option to add `force` mode to the updater?

I have this issue for update 4 of R2018a on Linux. The installation of MATLAB is a folder which requires root for write permission. The only program touched those files was Update 3.

Answer 2

[Justin Ghetti]

Hi,

If you are still experiencing this issue, please contact MathWorks support:

https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html

-Justin

[Royi Avital]

I think your Linux Scripts aren't robust enough. Is there an option to "Force Update" without caring about the file touch date?

[Kyle Perry]

Hello Royi,

Currently there is not, I am forwarding this request internally for future reference though.

Answer 3

[kira]

hello, same issue here!!! Any fix?

[Justin Ghetti]

Hi,

If you are still experiencing this issue, please contact MathWorks support:

https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html

-Justin

Answer 4

[James Macdonald]

Turn off your anti-virus software and reinstall Matlab. On my system, the anti-virus software was altering the date modified timestamps at installation, which was triggering the meta data check to fail when trying to update Matlab.

Answer 5

[Faheem Ershad]

So I went into the log file and searched for the "Skipping update" line as the support team suggested. For my case, I was getting the "Skipping" a couple lines after a line that listed this as the problematic directory:

bin/win64/connector_plugins/connector/rest_matlab/libmwconnectorrestmatlabactivator.dll

That's in your MATLAB/r2018a/ folder by the way.

I went into that directory and saw that there was a -OLD addition at the end of the .dll file. In other words, the file in that directory was named this:

libmwconnectorrestmatlabactivator.dll-OLD

I copied that file in the same directory and removed the -OLD from the end so that the file name ended with the .dll extension. I ran the update installer again and it worked!

Just for context, I was trying to update r2018a (update 1 I believe) to r2018a update 6.