# The ongoing Mathworks outage

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310>\
**Category:** Offtopic\
**Created:** [May 25, 2025, 5:10am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310 "2025-05-25T05:10:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 12\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gustaphe](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gustaphe/32/18174_2.png) [@gustaphe](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gustaphe)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 5:10am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/1 "2025-05-25T05:10:09Z")

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Mathworks, the company behind MATLAB, is entering week two of a huge service outage: [https://status.mathworks.com/](https://status.mathworks.com/) (if this is why you are here, welcome! 🙂 )

It affects downloads, package installation, the Online environment and in some cases every day use, basically anything that requires access to the license server, as well as their online documentation.

What are Julia’s points of failure? In what sense is Julia safe from this kind of outage?

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**Author:** ![ufechner7](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ufechner7/32/51363_2.png) [@ufechner7](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ufechner7)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 6:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/2 "2025-05-25T06:07:03Z")

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Most important are the Pkg servers. You can check their status here:

> **[Statuspage for JuliaLang hosted services](https://status.julialang.org/)**

Looks a lot more green than the Matlab cite! 😀

There was an outage two years ago, see:

> [@Outage: Julia package server offline \[resolved\]](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/outage-julia-package-server-offline-resolved/95599):
>
> Status: Resolved Description Around 2023-03-06T08:16:00Z (UTC) the DNS resolver for the package servers went offline. Mitigation As a temporary measure we are resolving the DNS names for the pkgservers directly. This minimizes impact while we are working on resolving the core issue. play_button Outdated Resolution At 2023-03-06T15:40:00Z (UTC) the load balancing DNS server resumed functionality and full service was restored. Next steps This outage highlighted a single point of failure in our pkgs…

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**Author:** ![woclass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/woclass/32/212699_2.png) [@woclass](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/woclass)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 6:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/3 "2025-05-25T06:21:14Z")

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> [@gustaphe](#):
>
> What are Julia’s points of failure?

tl; dr: Github and Pkg Server

### Download

Currently relying on AWS S3: [julialang-s3.julialang.org](http://julialang-s3.julialang.org)

In addition to [julialang.org](http://julialang.org), there are a number of mirror sites that store binary packages of julia.

- [Index of /julia-releases/ | 清华大学开源软件镜像站 | Tsinghua Open Source Mirror](https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/julia-releases/)
- [Directory: /julia-releases/ | Intelligent Software Research Center - Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://mirror.iscas.ac.cn/julia-releases/)

### Docs

The documentation site seems to be based on a github deployment + Fastly CDN.  
But you can always choose to use the documentation that comes with your local julia binary. All you need is an HTTP server to view it.

- On my local PC: static HTML located in  
`~\.julia\juliaup\julia-1.11.5+0.x64.w64.mingw32\share\doc\julia\html\en`
- For localisation documents may be hosted on other server.  
For Chinese documentation, it is currently hosted on `Github/Gitlab + Alibaba Cloud`  
[https://docs.juliacn.com/](https://docs.juliacn.com/)

### Package distribution

Currently depends on

- Github
  - [GitHub - JuliaRegistries/General: The official registry of general Julia packages](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General)
  - Resources hardcoded in `build.jl`
  - Resources hardcoded in `Artifacts.toml` that do not have the `download` attribute specified.

- [pkg.julialang.org](http://pkg.julialang.org) (Pkg Server)  
[Statuspage for JuliaLang hosted services](https://status.julialang.org/)

You can set up your Pkg Server by using [JuliaPackaging/PkgServer.jl](https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/PkgServer.jl)  
and [johnnychen94/StorageMirrorServer.jl](https://github.com/johnnychen94/StorageMirrorServer.jl)

The Chinese community has set up some mirrors of Pkg Server.  
They are mainly set up by universities and commercial companies.  
[(Post in Chinese) Julia PkgServer 镜像服务及镜像站索引 - Julia中文社区](https://discourse.juliacn.com/t/topic/2969)

- [mirrors.pku.edu.cn/julia](https://mirrors.pku.edu.cn/julia)
- [https://releases.tongyuan.cc/juliapkg/original](https://releases.tongyuan.cc/juliapkg/original)

### Source code

We mainly use GitHub, but many repositories have mirrors available locally or online.  
Maybe we could set up some official git repo mirror on `gitlab/bitbucket/git.sr.ht/...`

### Development

Currently relying on

- Github
- Buildkite (CI)
- AWS S3 (host binary files)
- (weak dependency)
  - Slack
  - [discourse.julialang.org](http://discourse.julialang.org)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Oscar\_Smith](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/oscar_smith/32/25343_2.png) [@Oscar\_Smith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Oscar_Smith)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 6:54am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/4 "2025-05-25T06:54:34Z")

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> tl; dr: Github and Pkg Server

Note that these aren’t single points of failure. They are redundant. The PkgServer stores a fully redundant copy of every registered version of every registered package, and Pkg allows installing packages from github/gitlab URLS. As such, neither going down is enough to cause a full outage.

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**Author:** ![GregVernon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gregvernon/32/5611_2.png) [@GregVernon](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/GregVernon)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 4:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/5 "2025-05-25T16:27:43Z")

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For what it’s worth, the current rumor is that this is a [cyberattack](https://news.ki.se/operatinginfo/service-status-mathworks) (possibly ransomware?).

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**Author:** ![linwaytin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/898d66/32.png) [@linwaytin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/linwaytin)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 7:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/6 "2025-05-25T19:09:19Z")

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I haven’t used Matlab for many years. Before I think I can use it without network, but you mentioned “license server”. Does that mean you need Internet connection to use Matlab?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ufechner7](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ufechner7/32/51363_2.png) [@ufechner7](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ufechner7)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 9:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/7 "2025-05-25T21:12:13Z")

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You need the license center to install Matlab or any new Matlab toolboxes. I have Matlab working on one machine, but cannot install it on a second machine because the server is down. And from the university I always get a license for year, so if it should expire I cannot renew it (until they fixed the outage). I only need it for the software I wrote 12 years ago, since then I am happy with Julia.

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**Author:** ![GregVernon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gregvernon/32/5611_2.png) [@GregVernon](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/GregVernon)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/8 "2025-05-26T04:00:00Z")

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It’s been ~6 years since I ran our site’s Matlab licensing, but I’m pretty sure they still support emailing you a license file(s) that you can point to during the install and, in a pinch, can send USB with installer executables – just reach out to your organizations sales representative.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gustaphe](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gustaphe/32/18174_2.png) [@gustaphe](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gustaphe)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2025, 5:39am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/9 "2025-05-26T05:39:46Z")

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Yep, they just confirmed it was ransomware. [https://status.mathworks.com/](https://status.mathworks.com/)

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**Author:** ![Benny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/49beb7/32.png) [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2025, 3:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/11 "2025-05-26T15:06:21Z")

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Curious because I haven’t used MATLAB in a LONG time, but why are the complaints online (mostly reddit) so serious? I get that not being able to install or update packages is usually a show-stopper for _writing_ code, but there are some stories about not being able to _run_ their usual projects. Shouldn’t that be possible with offline use? Was there some unnecessary server check getting in people’s way or is MATLAB Online just a lot more common now?

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**Author:** ![joa-quim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/joa-quim/32/227_2.png) [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2025, 3:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/12 "2025-05-26T15:25:33Z")

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I can work perfectly fine with Matlab. The mandatory updated happened to me only once and it was in September.

What I find more annoying is no being able to access the FEX.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gustaphe](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gustaphe/32/18174_2.png) [@gustaphe](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gustaphe)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2025, 8:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-ongoing-mathworks-outage/129310/13 "2025-05-26T20:32:29Z")

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To my understanding, MATLAB does regular license checks on some kinds of installation (depending on what type of license structure your organization signed up for). Some users were simply locked out from their offline environments some time in the last week.