MATLAB Licensing error: -9,57

I installed the trail version of matlab on my Debian GNU/Linux stretch/sid 64-bit Gnome version 3.22.2 laptop and it was working FINE when I first ran it at home. Then I go to work and this happens:

>>tess@tesslaptop:~$ ./matlab.sh

MATLAB is selecting SOFTWARE OPENGL rendering.

License checkout failed.

License Manager Error -9

The hostid of your computer does not match the hostid of the license file. 

To run MATLAB on this computer, you must run the Activation client to reactivate your license.

Troubleshoot this issue by visiting: 
http://www.mathworks.com/support/lme/R2016b/9

Diagnostic Information:

Feature: MATLAB 

License path: /home/tess/.matlab/R2016b_licenses:/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/licenses/license.dat:/usr/local/MATLAB/R
2016b/licenses/trial_3689340_R2016b.lic 

Licensing error: -9,57.

And I swear I haven't changed anything. I'm the only user on my laptop, I do also have Windows installed, but I put MATLAB on Debian (coz I only use Windows for games :D ). I've run the activation client and that's still not working - I tried putting in my email and selecting the license I've already installed, and it said I couldn't put it on another computer. I've tried telling it where the license is on my computer and it gave me this error:

This license file appears to have been generated for a different computer. 
Either:  
- Go back and activate automatically using the Internet.  
- Or, if you do not have a license file for this computer, select the option indicating you do not have a license file. 
  We will help you with the next steps.

I'm now completely out of ideas, any thoughts?

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

[Andreas U]

Hello,

I dont know, if the answer is still needed or not, but for me, it helped to change the owner of the whole directory from root to your user.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Are you using the same ethernet connection you were using before? For example at home were you using a wifi connection, but at work a hard-wired connection?

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/160919-license-manager-error-9-linux-wifi-versus-ethernet

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/101892-what-is-a-host-id-how-do-i-find-my-host-id-in-order-to-activate-my-license

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/73938-activating-on-linux-without-eth0#answer_83863

[T.J. Slaven-Blair]

At home I was on wifi, and at work I'm using the ethernet cable. I did wonder if that would be an issue, though that seems a bit weird. I'll have a look at those links, thanks :)

[T.J. Slaven-Blair]

It's definitely the internet connection, as I can load matlab fine at home through my wifi. What gets me is when I was activating matlab the first time, I selected the option for using matlab without any internet connection. But when I just unplug and attempt to run it, it does not work.

Those links were not helpful, I don't understand enough about computers to follow them, and I had already looked at them before posting here.

Why anyone would purposely design a program where the user has to change the license files depending on what kind of connection they have, I will never understand. It seems completely counter intuitive, and is certainly making me glad I only dl'd the trial of matlab - coz I won't be dl'ing the full paid one, that's for sure. Might try Octave to run my matlab code, or just try a work-around in good ol' Python.

That said, I would still appreciate help with this, as I still have like 25 days of trial matlab and it would be nice to be able to use it at work on my laptop.

Cheers

PS. If you're wondering, I moved both my responses from answers to my question, to comments to you answer.. Trying to follow the formatting of the site properly :) And don't take my gripe with matlab personally, I very much appreciate your help!

[Walter Roberson]

"Why anyone would purposely design a program where the user has to change the license files depending on what kind of connection they have"

They did not deliberately design the connections to be a problem.

The reports there imply that the problem should have been fixed as of R2014a; I do not know enough about Linux to say why it might be showing up for you in a newer release. I also do not happen to recognize that distribution.

As this is an installation problem, you can contact Mathworks for free support on the matter, even though you are using a Trial license.

Historically, there was always a "primary" ethernet connector that could be examined, and there was only a quite small number of names it would have. As computers (especially servers) added more and more connectors, and as different kinds of connectors (e.g., bluetooth, wi-fi, ethernet on USB, ethernet on SD slot) became more common, it became more and more difficult to say what the "primary" connection was, and more and more difficult to properly name them automatically or to know what names to look for them. Linux started using a new naming scheme so that it could at least be consistent on the device names between boots; it took time for MATLAB to catch up with that naming system.

If I read the documentation correctly, now MATLAB sends the list of all the computer MAC addresses to the license server for use in constructing the license file. That could still run into problems, though, if at the time the license file was constructed, some of the ethernet devices were not present (disabled, perhaps) and if later those were activated but the devices that were noted for the license file were considered not present (disabled, perhaps.)

-----

Figuring out which hardware device to use the serial number of is tricky.

Hard drive serial numbers have been used in the past, but that did not work once "diskless" systems became common -- and people expect to be able to upgrade or replace their drive without having to re-license everything.

For a time, you could not count on computers having any ethernet devices, and "the" serial port tended to be used for modems, so for a time dongles tended to be used on the parallel port.

After that there used to always be "a" motherboard ethernet device, but those tended to fail or be disabled because they were crap compared to the add-on ethernet boards.

USB dongles were popular for a time.

Somewhere in there, CPU serial numbers started getting used. Not all manufacturers put them in, but the big name ones did.... mostly. But as it become common to put in multiple CPUs with multiple cores, the question of which of them to key off of became a problem. There was also the issue that the really mass market systems used exact clones of the CPUs, no CPU serial number.

That exact cloning never happened to ethernet MAC addresses, because the MAC addresses were always intended to serve as identifiers to distinguish systems, a purpose that would have been defeated with exact clones.

So, more or less by default, MAC addresses, imperfect as they are, tended to win out as to what to key licenses off of.