Legacy MATLAB R2009b and R2015b stopped working after update from MacOSX 10.11 to 10.13

Dear Experts,

I have been running Mac OSX 10.11.6 (El Capitan) for quite some years, and using legacy MATLAB 2009b and 2015b without any problem.

After the update to OSX 10.13.6 (High Sierra), both versions stopped working and complain about missing JAVA environement.

matlab 2009b produces this error.

/Applications/MATLAB_R2009b.app/bin/matlab: line 1197: [: /Library/Internet: binary operator expected
/Applications/MATLAB_R2009b.app/bin/matlab: line 1199: [: /Library/Internet: binary operator expected
/Applications/MATLAB_R2009b.app/bin/matlab: line 1201: [: /Library/Internet: binary operator expected
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warning: Cannot locate Java Runtime Environment (JRE) . . .
 
         1. Either a correct JRE was not available for redistribution when
            this release was shipped, in which case you should refer to the
            Release Notes for additional information about how to get it.
 
         2. Or you have tried to use the MATLAB_JAVA environment variable
            to specify an alternate JRE, but MATLAB cannot find it.  Please
            run 'matlab -n' to determine what value you are using for
            MATLAB_JAVA and fix accordingly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
JavaVM: Failed to load JVM: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home/bundle/Libraries/libserver.dylib
JavaVM FATAL: Failed to load the jvm library.
JavaVM: Failed to load JVM: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home/bundle/Libraries/libserver.dylib
JavaVM FATAL: Failed to load the jvm library.
JavaVM: Failed to load JVM: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home/bundle/Libraries/libserver.dylib
JavaVM FATAL: Failed to load the jvm library.
Fatal Error on startup: Failed to initialize Java

matlab 2015b produces this error

[1]   Terminated: 15          /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/bin/matlab
[2]   Terminated: 15          /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/bin/matlab
[3]   Terminated: 15          /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/bin/matlab
Markus-MacBook-Pro:~ markus$ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warning: Cannot locate Java Runtime Environment (JRE) . . .
 
         1. Either a correct JRE was not available for redistribution when
            this release was shipped, in which case you should refer to the
            Release Notes for additional information about how to get it.
 
         2. Or you have tried to use the MATLAB_JAVA environment variable
            to specify an alternate JRE, but MATLAB cannot find it.  Please
            run 'matlab -n' to determine what value you are using for
            MATLAB_JAVA and fix accordingly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warning: Unable to find Java library: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/lib/server/libjvm.dylib
Please check if you have a MATLAB_JAVA environment variable.
Note that MATLAB requires Java version 1.4 or higher.
Warning: Disabling Java support

my Java say this:

java -version
java version "13.0.2" 2020-01-14
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 13.0.2+8)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 13.0.2+8, mixed mode, sharing)

Can anyone help me? I am lost!!

Thanks, Markus

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You need to install the Java 6 Legacy Runtime; https://appuals.com/how-to-install-legacy-java-se-6-runtime-on-macos/

Caution: MATLAB R2009b is not expected to work on High Sierra if your region environment is not set up as English USA, except for a small number of other (mostly English) combinations that are expected to work. Apple changed the way that region information is to be fetched. I think it was fixed by R2015b but not R2015a.

R2009b is not supported in High Sierra.

I just tried installing R2009bSP1 on High Sierra, but I got a "critical error" about a missing .enc file.

[Markus Gschwind]

Dear Walter,

Thank you. I did install Java 6 as described above. Now it says

markus$ objc[9554]: Class JavaLaunchHelper is implemented in both /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/bin/java (0x1012054c0) and /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/lib/jli/libjli.dylib (0x11b4d1480). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

Inside matlab it says:

>> version -java

ans =

Java 1.7.0_75-b13 with Oracle Corporation Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM mixed mode

I have 3 generation of JAVA installaed now:

markus$ ls /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/
1.6.0.jdk		adoptopenjdk-8.jdk	jdk-13.0.2.jdk

And: my geographical region should not be affected by the incompatibility issue.

Could you further help, please?

Thank you!

Markus

[Walter Roberson]

https://www.mathworks.com/help/compiler_sdk/java/configure-your-java-environment.html

[Markus Gschwind]

Thanks Walter,

I have defined MATLAB_JAVA and added this to the path

export MATLAB_JAVA="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home"; 
PATH=$PATH:$MATLAB_JAVA;

But now it wount open and says this:

markus$ Warning: Unable to find Java library: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/lib/server/libjvm.dylib
Please check if you have a MATLAB_JAVA environment variable.
Note that MATLAB requires Java version 1.4 or higher.
Warning: Disabling Java support

This librabry file libjvm.dylib actually doesnt exist anywhere in any JAVA version on my HD.

Can you help further please?

THank you!

[Walter Roberson]

In later versions it shows up under sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/lib/server/libjvm.dylib relative to the MATLAB install directory.

I will look around and see if I still have an installed version as old as you are using.

[Walter Roberson]

Interestingly, a copy of the dylib was installed with the game The Count Lucanor ;-)

[Walter Roberson]

I find it on one of my earlier OS under

System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Libraries/libjvm.dylib

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_55.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib/server/libjvm.dylib

I also see it bundled with MATLAB starting with

Applications/MATLAB_R2013b.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/lib/server/libjvm.dylib

I have not examined yet to see if it did not exist in older releases or if I simply do not have older ones installed.

[Walter Roberson]

I was able to get the R2008b installer to run on High Sierra. It bombed out in the activation phase at the end due to not being able to find Java. So I set JAVA_HOME to point to jdk 1.6.0 and tried launching MATLAB 7.6 . It said it needed X11. So I installed XQuartz and tried launching MATLAB 7.6 again. It told me it couldn't find /bin/maci/setsid . So I tracked down a linux-tools package that could be installed with brew. Turns out I needed to install brew first... That done, MATLAB 7.6 complained in sequence about some missing executables, that turned out to be one level down in /Applications -- like /Applications/bin/matlab when it was looking for /bin/matlab . Looks like it was missing an environment variable telling it which basic installation directory to use. Turns out I didn't need to brew install, I just needed to link /bin/maci to point to /Applications/bin/maci .

But after that it turns out to complain about missing .dylib files, and I'm going to give up there.

I do not remember enough at the moment about the R2009a installer for Mac to know if it used the MATLAB<space>NUMBER structure or the MATLAB_R2009a.app structure -- the ones with the spaces were always a pain to deal with on later versions of Mac.

[Markus Gschwind]

Dear Walter!

Thanks for your exceptional effort!

OK, I understand, I am OK to drop Matlab 2009, I understand that the time distance of 8 years is quite huge.

However, above I was also trying to bring R2015b back to work. It is not a new install, it was working perfectly on the same machine under macOS 10.11.6 befor the OS update.

While macOS 10.13 came in 2017, MATLAB 2015 came in 2015, so only 2 years earlier. So in my understanding it would be very astonishing, if it was impossible to make it work again!

The above reported error messages were created when I was trying to start MATALB R2015b from the terminal.

I am not sure if I need to point MATLAB_JAVA to the system installation of JAVA (1.6.0, or 1.8.0?) or rather the MATLAB own java installation where R2015b was searching at the beginning and could'nt find an unambigous path.

markus$ objc[9554]: Class JavaLaunchHelper is implemented in both /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/bin/java (0x1012054c0) and /Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/lib/jli/libjli.dylib (0x11b4d1480). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

Thanks for help!

Markus

[Walter Roberson]

I have installed a number of old releases with High Sierra including R2015bSP1 and have not had Java difficulties with any of ones that show up as MATLAB_R20xx*.app without setting JAVA_HOME

[Markus Gschwind]

What I did now:

I referenced MATALB_JAVA to where it was looking for it initially

export MATLAB_JAVA="/Applications/MATLAB_R2015b.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/"

and it seems to WORK!!

Thank you for all the help!

[Walter Roberson]

Sounds good!

Those 10+ year old versions are difficult to work with these days. MATLAB's packaging improved a lot when they went for the MATLAB_R20xx.app directory structure.