Dear Pieter,

Your message confused me a bit (I'm not yet familiar with Matlab 6) ...
I think you don't need to downgrade your matlab version but to upgrade your
linux distribution.

Your FreeBSD distribution probably still uses the old style BSD tty devices,
as Matlab 5 does. 
Matlab 6 probably requires the newstyle Unix98 pts devices.

To adjust your current setup, for supporting these devices I would recommend
the following steps:
1) - make sure you use a 2.2.x or higher linux kernel.
   - make sure you use the GNU C library glibc 2.0.9x or later.
2) create the /dev/ptmx device using mknod and the info contained in the
   file Documentation/devices.txt in your kernel source directory.
3) compile in the kernel the following:
	a) Unix98 PTY support
	b) /dev/pts filesystem for Unix98 PTYs
Read the instructions in Documentation/Changes pertaining to pseudo
terminals for more details.

Note that most modern non-FreeBSD distributions already have this support
(like the Debian GNU/Linux distribution).


Hope this helps,
		Simone Reinders.


P.S.I
To see which terminal devices you use (pts or tty) just type 'w' at the
prompt:
- Old:
USER     TTY   
simone   ttyp0
- New:
USER     TTY   
simone   pts/0 

P.S.II
>From Documentation/Changes:
"
   Optional support for Unix98 pty devices has also been added. If you
want to use the Unix98 ptys, you should be running at least
glibc-2.0.9x, and you must switch completely to Unix98 pty's.  The
general procedure for configuring Unix98 pty support is:

- Compile your kernel with CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS and CONFIG_DEVPTS_FS.
- mknod /dev/ptmx c 5 2
  chmod 666 /dev/ptmx
  mkdir /dev/pts
- Add to /etc/fstab:

  none            /dev/pts        devpts        gid=5,mode=620    0 0

   (Note:  gid=5 is applicable for Red Hat systems for which group "tty" has
   gid 5.  Adjust according to your distribution.  Use mode=600 if you want
   "mesg n" to be default.)
- Mount /dev/pts
"

--
 A.A.T.S. Reinders

 University Hospital of Groningen
 Biological Psychiatry, Room 6.21
 Hanzeplein 1, 9713 GZ  Groningen       Phone: +31 (0)50 36 12036/13855
 P.O. Box 30001, 9700 RB Groningen      Fax  : +31 (0)50 36 11699
 The Netherlands                        Email: [log in to unmask]


> Dear Keith,
> 
> We have just installed Matlab 6 on a FreeBSD machine, together with
> SPM99.
> It works all just fine, but there is one major drawback: to execute
> shell scripts,
> like !mkdir or !rm -f, you need an exotic device /dev/ptmx, which is not
> on many linux
> distributions. 
> If you want to write to files, making dirs etc., IT DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK
> (at least this
> is my experience)
> 
> We are forced to downgrade our Matlab version.
> 
> greetz
> 
>   Pieter
> -- 
> ____________________________________________________________
> Pieter Vandemaele
> Engineer - M.Sc. Computer Science
> 
> MR Department UZ-RUG
> De Pintelaan 185
> 9000 Ghent
> BELGIUM
> 
> Tel :  +32 (0)9 240 40 73
> mailto:[log in to unmask]
> ____________________________________________________________
> 



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