Matlab doesn't launch, keeps asking for activation

I have just installed Matlab R2011a on Ubuntu 12.04 using a standalone licence. The installation appears to have worked properly, and I have run the following to get rid of an error that everyone (including myself) seemed to be having:

sudo ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so /lib64/libc.so.6

This got rid of the error, but I still have a problem launching Matlab. Each time I launch it (by typing "matlab" in terminal), the Mathworks software activation window pops up. I provide the path to the licence file, it appears to activate successfully (no errors), but then Matlab doesn't launch. If I try to run it again, the same thing happens.

Does anyone know what might be going wrong? My last install was 10.04, and I had absolutely no problems running 2011a.

I think the licence should be updated. I fixed the problem by requesting a new licence from Mathworks and activating MATLAB with that licence file. They provided the same installation key for my computer's host id, but the 'licence.lic' file is updated. I think reinstallation is not necessary, activation with an updated licence just solves the problem.

Just change your system date to the previous years and launch the application!

You can do this from the command-line using:

date +%Y%m%d -s "20120418"

Is it possible that launching MATLAB in that way runs the activation tool instead of MATLAB?

Try running /usr/local/MATLAB/R2011a/bin/matlab (change the path according to the location on your system) in the terminal to see if that runs MATLAB. If not, perhaps you can still get some error messages from there that might be useful for your question.