How can I stop the MathWorks Service Host from running on startup?

How can I stop the MathWorks Service Host from running on startup?

Answer 1

[Matthew Elmer]

This answer that was given by the same person who asked the question is a lie. It's easily disabled.

The first and best option for disabling the MathWorks Service Host is to uninstall Matlab and use a better programming language.

If you are in the unfortunate position of needing to be able to run Matlab code due to its recalcitrance in being purged from our research institutions, then you can at least prevent the process from running on startup. I do not know the precise steps to disable the startup process on Windows, but you can probably find and disable it if you poke around in the startup applications settings. On Fedora 40 linux, you can either remove the entry from startup applications via Gnome Tweaks, or you can open

/home/$USER/.config/autostart/mathworks-service-host.desktop

and comment out the part that comes after the equals sign on the line that starts with Exec=, i.e., change

Exec=/home/$USER/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2024.7.0.6/bin/glnxa64/MathWorksServiceHost service --realm-id companion@prod@production

to

Exec=#/home/$USER/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/-mw_shared_installs/v2024.7.0.6/bin/glnxa64/MathWorksServiceHost service --realm-id companion@prod@production.

The audacity of MathWorks to attempt to tell me what I can and cannot do on my own computer is amusing, but foolish.

[Mike VanHorn]

@Matthew Elmer This is good information, but it is useful only when the user has already run the software once. Is there a way to "pre-comment this out" before the user has run the software? I figure I can pre-create the mathworks-service-host.desktop for newly created accounts, but I don't want to have to touch every account which already exists but hasn't run R2024a yet.

I did a search through the install directory, and I didn't find a "mathworks-service-host.desktop" file that could be modified, which I think means it's either compressed somewhere waiting to be deployed when the application starts or it just creates it from scratch.

I guess what I'll do for now is put the modified "mathworks-service-host.desktop" into the skel files for new accounts, and create a script to run through all the existing home directories.

Thanks!

[Mike VanHorn]

@Matthew Elmer Further testing shows that while commenting out the line in the "mathworks-service-host.desktop" does keep the service from starting at login, the client still gets started when Matlab runs. So, my method of symlinking $HOME/.MathWorks/ServiceHost to a place in the local /tmp directory is still necessary to work around the incredible slowness associated with the creation of that directory the first time a user runs MATLAB (as the client runs from $HOME/.MathWorks/ServiceHost). For those who aren't paying attention, the Service Host installer puts 1.4GB of files into $HOME/.MathWorks/ServiceHost.

So, anyway, still looking for a way to disable the ServiceHost. But, on the bright side, it seems that the ServiceHost processes do get killed when the user logs out, so at least they aren't running rampant.

Answer 2

[Mike VanHorn]

Also, I can confirm this answer is at least partially false.

I tried removing $HOME/.MathWorks/ServiceHost/wilbur26/v2024.7.0.6/bin/glnxa64/MathWorksServiceHost, and while MATLAB start up was then slow, it did start up, and the licensing was fine. So MathWorksServiceHost seems to be NOT "essential for MATLAB licensing and MATLAB startup". I'm thinking it must only be related the MATLAB Connector.

However, there does, indeed, seem to be no way to disable it, and rather only work around it's slowness.

Answer 3

[Dimitrios]

Hi Matthew,

In order to disable MathWorks Service Host from starting at Operating System login, you can:

Windows: Follow these instructions of Microsoft to toggle off the Mathworks Service Host startup

Linux: Delete this file: ~/.config/autostart/mathworks-service-host.desktop

macOS: Delete this file: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mathworks.mathworksservicehost.agent.plist

If these files are deleted, MathWorks Service Host will honour this choice and will not re-create them. However modifying the files, as suggested in other answers, will not work for very long, as they will be updated when MathWorks Service Host is updated.

Please note that MathWorks Service Host will still run when MATLAB is started, and that MathWorks Service Host is required for the correct functioning of MATLAB R2024a and later.

[Mike VanHorn]

As I already posted, "MathWorks Service Host is required for the correct functioning of MATLAB R2024a and later" seems to be false, as I was able to disable it entirely and MATLAB still seemed to work just fine. If you could please explain exactly what MathWorks Service Host does, perhaps we would better understand the need for it. From the outside, all it seem to do is slow down the startup of MATLAB, which is pretty slow to start with.

Also, if the modifications I have made to certain files get overwritten when MATLAB is updated, there will be a HUGE explosion of extremely pissed of systems administrators. The second an application starts overwriting user files not associated with the application and housed on an entirely different server, it becomes a security issue and the application goes away very quickly, no matter the precieved "need".

[Dimitrios]

Hi Mike,

You are absolutely right, lots of MATLAB functionality will not be impacted by the absence of MathWorks Service Host, but disabling it will cause performance and/or functional issues for many users. MathWorks Service Host, although a separate process, is part of MATLAB, so disabling it is something similar to deleting files from the installation of a program, it may work some times but there is a high possibility that you may break something.

Regarding the MATLAB startup time, if MathWorks Service Host is already running it should not slow down MATLAB.

Thank you for the feedback regarding the modification of the autostart file. Since these files are owned / created by MathWorks Service Host, we thought that it is reasonable to update them when MathWorks Service Host is updated. If the files are deleted, we will honour that and not recreate them. Deleting the files is therefore the recommended solution to opt-out, rather than modifying them, which will only work temporarily.

[eng3]

Exactly what "performance and/or functional issues" will disabling MathWorks Service Host cause?

Are they all related to web services. Matlab is completely unable to access the internet on our network due to other flaws. If that is it, then it should be safe but if there is something else, I'd like to know

[Bennet]

This suggests that Matlab R2024a and later are inappropriate for use on shared computers, such as lab computers, clusters, and remote login machines, and that anyone who administers machines used by multiple people should install Matlab R2023b and not any subsequent versions.

[Conor Burgess]

More information can be found here.

@Bennet if you are running into issues with MathWorks Service Host in any of the cases you mention, please contact support.

[Bennet]

The document you cite does not address the issue of the persistent daemons still running, nor how to prevent them from starting in the first place. MathWorks has chosen to write software for personal computers. It's current behavior is simply inappropriate for shared environments with restrictions on what should be run by users. In our case, the Matlab installation is installed centrally, users do not have permission to change it, automatic updates are neither desired nor a good idea for managed installations, and licensing is via a remote license server, and we do NOT want to enable Matlab Drive on these systems.

In short, we think it sad that these are not optional. Since you've decided they are not, we will stop updating Matlab at the last version prior to their introduction and declare Matlab 'deprecated' software for this particular use.

You suggest contacting support, however, I suspect they will say the same things that have been said and will not have instructions for disabling MathWorks Service Host entirely. MathWorks support has shown many times that most of its support personnel are quite good at helping individuals on their personal computers and that they do not understand well the contraints, uses, and desires of those of us who install for many people on shared machines.

You made your choice, and we are making ours. At this point, I think we agree to disagree. If at some point MathWorks does, indeed, make installing MathWorks Service Host an optional feature, I'd be happy to give it another try. Until then, R2023b is what we'll use.

[Conor Burgess]

Thank you for your feedback. We have various options for customers for whom the default MathWorks Service Host workflow is not appropriate, and support can help us to understand your requirements and which of those options is most appropriate. Alternatively, if we need to work on a different option to support your requirements, we can capture that too. If you don't contact support, none of that is possible, but that is of course your choice!

[Bennet]

Thanks for the additional information, Conor. We'll open a support ticket.