that is, i wanted to
install matlab
you may already see why this is-
... a bad idea.
but MathWorks have a Docker Container, which seemed like a good way to not have it destroy my system. and it was!!! downloading stuff took ages. whatever. expected that, plus it's cached so i'm not angry yet. one problem.
20:00
~> docker run -it --rm -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \ -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:ro --shm-size=512M \
mathworks/matlab:r2023a
Running matlab
Starting MATLAB with license: [blah blah] - MATLAB (Individual)
[dear reader: pause here for about
10 minutes to simulate the issue]
so that's annoying. why's it so slow to launch?? i tried not using --rm to see if it was a first-boot thing, but it happened every time, no matter what i did or didn't do.
we have a puzzle
to solve 
i have seen this before (different software but same root cause) and i have an opinion about it
click to reveal spoiler for above post
if you close 512 consecutive file descriptors that weren't open anyway, linux should close the rest of them for you and modify your fucking memory space to skip past this bullshit loop
like come on close_range(2) exists since v5.9 and even if you must support something older than that you can read /proc/self/fd!

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