Automatically restart Matlab after Microsoft forces restart

Good morning and happy new year everyone.

I've just got back from a three week break over Christmas. I left a simulation running hoping it would be finished by today. However, on day three of my vacation, despite my best efforts to prevent it, Microsoft forced a restart and update installation. I am not impressed!

Is there a way to automatically restart Matlab and run a script file or function after such an occurrence?

My script file has several blocks, ideally I would like to start from the current block. Is this a possibility?

Many thanks

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

That you are not impressed is not relevant to MATLAB, but a problem with your OS. It decided to restart, and thereby blew you out of the water. MATLAB was offered no choice in the matter.

One way to resolve this on a long simulation is to periodically save results to a file so if things die, you can at least restart from that point.

[Star Strider]

This is definitely the best approach, since it also works with respect to power failures and other calamities. It’s also what I did when running long simulations, creating and then appending to a ‘.mat’ file at each iteration.

[jlt199]

Thanks, do you have a simple example of how this would work? And how you would find out where you were?

Instead of writing to arrays I've been writing strings of variables to textfiles. But I haven't figured out how to then find where I was and continue from there

Many thanks

[Star Strider]

When I used this approach, I saved the necessary intermediate variable values to ‘.mat’ files. I was writing one file with the interim simulation results, and a separate file (that I overwrote at each iteration) with the counters and all the intermediate variable values that would allow me to restart from an interruption.

I had to restart the computer and MATLAB manually (since the interruptions were usually due to thunderstorms), but I didn’t have to restart the simulation from the beginning.

[Guillaume]

Somethink like:

function StartSimulation(initcond1, initcond2, initcond3, ...)
   currentstate.x = initcond1;
   currentstate.a = initcond2;
   currentstate.b = initcond3;
   DoSimulation(currentsate);
end

function ResumeSimulation()
   currentstate = load('simulationstate.mat');
   DoSimulation(currentstate);
end

function DoSimulation(currentstate)
   %the currentstate structure contains all variable necessary to perform one pass of the simulation
   %if for some reason the simulation stops, the mat file contains the state of the simulation at the end of the last pass of the simulation.
   while ~finished
       currentstate.x = f1(currentstate.x);
       [currentstate.a, currentstate.b] = f2(currentstate.a, currentstate.b);
       %...
       %at the end of the current processing pass, save everything in one go
       save('simulationstate.mat', '-struct', 'currentstate');
   end
end

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

Well, you can always add a matlab shortcut to the windows startup folder, then configure matlab to launch your script in its startup.m. As for resuming your script at a given location, it is only possible if you design it that way, for example, by writing its current progress in an m file and reading that progress when it starts.

But really, the best course of action is to truly disable automatic restarts (via group policy or registry).

[jlt199]

Thanks, I thought I had disabled the updates through the group policy. It worked for a few months but Microsoft found a way to override! :(

Answer 3

[Jan]

Neither this (admin privileges required)

system('sc stop wuauserv')
system('sc config wuauserv start=disabled')

nor disabling the scheduled task for the restarting:

system('schtasks /change /tn \Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Reboot /DISABLE')

works perfectly. E.g. the later is re-enabled automatically once a day.

If you run Windows 10 you have accepted the license agreement:

 6. Updates. The software periodically checks for system and app updates, 
 and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from
 Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your
 system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you
 agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional
 notice.

This means, that disabling the restart conflicts with the license conditions. Sigh.

If you require a system, which is guaranteed to not reboot automatically, install Matlab on Linux.

[jlt199]

Doh! Looks like they have us over a barrel :(

I wonder if I can convince my company to let me run Linux. Would my current licence work on Linux?

Thanks

[Jan]

"Your" license or your Matlab license? For the second: Yes. For the first: It depends on what you have signed with your license agreement. ;-)