In general this error occurs because you do not have permission to write to the license file directory. The remedy for this varies depending on your operating system.
Windows
Windows default security settings prevent users from writing to the Program Files directory. To work around this problem on Windows, launch the activation client directly as an administrator.
By default, the activation client is located here:
"C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R20XXx\bin\win64\activate_matlab.exe"
Right click on the activate_matlab.exe and select “Run as adminstrator.” Proceed with the activation process normally. If you are unable to run the application as an administrator, please contact your system administrator for assistance.
Mac
On Mac this can happen if you are not the owner or do not have permissions to write to the MATLAB application package. To resolve this issue:
If MATLAB does not start:
- Locate the MATLAB application package in your applications folder
- Right-click/control-click on the MATLAB icon and select “Get Info”
- Under “Sharing & Permissions,” make sure that you have Read & Write permissions under the “Privilege” column in the table of users.
If running the installer:
- Locate the MATLAB application package (matlab_R2XXXx_maciXX.dmg) in your downloads folder
- Right-click/control-click on the MATLAB dmg and select “Get Info”
- Under “Sharing & Permissions,” make sure that you have Read & Write permissions under the “Privilege” column in the table of users.
If the error persist when installing or starting:
- Click on the finder icon (Icon with the smiley face on the Dock)
- Click on the "Go" menu on the top left hand side of your display
- Click on "Home"
- Right-click/control-click on the Applications folder and select “Get Info”
- Under “Sharing & Permissions,” make sure that you have Read & Write permissions under the “Privilege” column in the table of users.
If you are unable to grant yourself Read & Write permission, please contact your system administrator for assistance.
Linux
On Linux this error indicates that you do not have permission to write to the licenses folder. Launch the activation client with sudo to work around this. by default the activation client is located here:
/usr/local/bin/glnxa64
Run these commands to activate MATLAB as sudo:
cd /usr/local/bin/glnxa64
sudo ./activate_matlab.sh
Ubuntu’s sudo behavior is different from most other Linux distributions, so you need to add the -E flag if you are on Ubuntu:
sudo -E ./activate_matlab.sh
If you are unable to run the activation client as sudo please contact your system administrator for assistance.
