Running

Matlab in the Background (Under Linux)

The idea of running a job in the background means that a software runs without any user interaction and additionally does not block your login shell. As remote access, this makes only sense under Unix/Linux. It applies both on your local machine, but might be particularly useful on a remote login; as in the previous section, this will be most useful for purely numerical (i.e., non-graphical) jobs. nohup \matlab -nojvm -nodisplay < driver.m >& driver.log & Here, the backslash in \matlab circumvents any possible alias you might have for Matlab (just to be on the safe side) and the options -nojvm -nodisplay suppress the starting of the JVM (and the startup of the desktop) and the opening of any windows. The final ampersand ("&") actually puts the command into the background, i.e., gives you the command-line prompt in your shell back. Aside from entering any usual commands now, you could in particular log out, without hanging or killing your job, because of the standard Unix/Linux command nohup before the call to Matlab. The file driver.m that must be present in the current directory is a Matlab script file (not: function file) that lists the commands to be executed by your job; if your job is actually performed by a function, this script file can simply be a single line that calls your function. For the remaining elements in the command-line above, I am assuming you are using the csh or tcsh shell; in other shells, the redirections may be slightly different. The "<" redirects stdin (namely from file driver.m) into Matlab. For the background run not to hang, there must not be any screen output, so the ">&" redirects both stdout and stderr to the file driver.log; this file must not exist initially. Again, the redirection commands may be different in other shells and slight variations are possible (such as overwriting an existing log file).

From http://www.math.umbc.edu/~gobbert/matlab.html