What is Mathworks Service Host?

I'm running Matlab 2023b on Ubuntu.

I'm just curious what this process is that's been put in .config/autostart//mathworks-service-host.desktop to start at login?

Matlab starts fine without it but when I close Matlab, a process namber MathworksServiceHost keeps running.

It's not a nice idea of having matlab-related processes running on the system after the application has been shut down. I have not noticed it on other version of Matlab. At least you should notify the user that a process is added to the autostart folder, and what it does.

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

This is so bad. This things permanently eats 38 Mo of my RAM and a bit of my CPU each 5 seconds, for absolutely zero benefit.

Typically the kind of thing which finalizes my preference for open source alternatives.

[Joshua Port]

38 Mo? Lucky you! It's ~300 Mo for me on a heavily RAM-limited laptop. It's asinine that this runs in the background even when Matlab is not open. Matlab Drive is useless to me and a paltry justification. What a frustrating, and painfully corporate design decision.

Once I graduate I will also be happily moving to open source alternatives.

Answer 2

[Steven Lord]

See this Answers post.

[Martin Randau]

Thanks for the reply. It seems like a nice feature. I think you should add more information about MATLAB Drive when installing, and also information about this service which is added to autostart. Unfortunately, MATLAB did no longer start when I uninstalled the Service Host per the instructions in the link. Reinstalling Service Host it did not work well either, since the file only ran with root access and installed to /bin. So now I'm reinstalling MATLAB and will just keep the service running.

[Peter]

Hi,

Did you get anywhere with is? I have a similar issue that eventually Matlab fails to return after a day or so of automatic testing.

Thanks

Peter.

Answer 3

[Conor Burgess]

More information about MathWorks Service Host can now be found here.