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Introduction

crash.m illustrates a bug of the Linux version of MATLAB concerning MEX.

How to crash MATLAB (on Linux)?

Run the following commands in the MATLAB command line under the directory containing crash.m.

  • Make MATLAB crash during mex('-setup', 'C'):
crash('setup');  % running only `crash` has the same effect
  • Make MATLAB crash during mex(timestwo_src, '-outdir', build_dir):
crash('mex');

The above commands crash MATLAB under Linux, as has been confirmed on the following editions of MATLAB.

  • R2018b Update 3 (9.5.0.1049112) 64-bit (glnxa64)
  • R2019b Update 5 (9.7.0.1319299) 64-bit (glnxa64)
  • R2020a (9.8.0.1323502) 64-bit (glnxa64)
  • R2021a Update 5 (9.10.0.1739362) 64-bit (glnxa64),
  • R2021b Update 1 (9.11.0.1809720) (glnxa64)

If you want to see how the crash looks like, check the GitHub Action Crash MATLAB of this repo.

To run crash.m, your MATLAB has to have MEX configured for compiling C. Normally you only need to install gcc and then run mex('-setup', 'C') in MATLAB.

According to limited tests, the bug does not affect the macOS version of MATLAB. On Windows, MATLAB will raise an error that

Error using crash>copy_src (line 165)
  The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

This is much more decent than crashing!

Why does MATLAB crash in this case?

Comparing the behaviors of MATLAB under Linux and Windows when executing crash.m, here is my speculation about the cause for the crash.

First, note that crash.m carries out the following four steps.

  • Step 1. Create a source directory named src containing timestwo.c and timestwo.mexa64;
  • Step 2. Copy the source directory src to a build directory named build;
  • Step 3. Call mex to compile timestwo.c in build, and then run timestwo(1);
  • Step 4. Redo the first three steps.

It is the timestwo.mexa64 contained in the src directory that causes the crash.

Why? In Step 3, a timestwo.mexa64 is created in the build directory, and then loaded into the memory when timestwo(1) is invoked. When we redo Steps 1 and 2, MATLAB tries replacing the timestwo.mexa64 contained in build with the one from src, while the former has been loaded into the memory. On Windows, MATLAB detects the conflict and tells us that "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process", where "the file" seems to refer to the timestwo.mexa64 in build; on Linux, however, MATLAB does something wrong that corrupts the memory, leading to the crash.

In this case, MATLAB does a good job on Windows. Meanwhile, the macOS version handles everything nicely without any error, which seems more desirable.

How to avoid the crash?

Before MathWorks fixes the bug, the crash can be avoided as demonstrated in the fix directory, where each script starting with yes_ is a slightly modified version of crash.m that does not suffer from the bug. The scripts starting with no_ illustrate some modifications that fail to solve the problem.

To summarize, MATLAB will stop crashing if we take any one of the following actions before copying the source files from the source directory to the build directory.

  1. Clear the mex function to be compiled before compiling it (yes_clear_mex_before_copy.m).
  2. In the source directory, remove the file with the same name as the mex file to be compiled (yes_clean_src_dir_before_copy.m).
  3. In the build directory, remove the file with the same name as the mex file to be compiled (yes_clean_build_dir_before_copy.m).

Any one of these there actions will resolve the conflict between the timestwo.mexa64 in build (and loaded into the memory) and the one in src when we redo Step 2 mentioned above.

However, doing any one of them after copying the source files cannot solve the problem. MATLAB will still crash, but this time during the copying (no_clear_mex_after_copy.m, no_clean_src_dir_after_copy.m, no_clean_build_dir_after_copy.m). This is simply because they cannot resolve the conflict described above.

Discussions

Contact

Feel free to contact me if have suggestions or questions. See my homepage for contact information.