"invalid %N$ use detected" vlfeat sift error

Question

I have used the vlfeat toolbox and the vl_sift, lot of times with no problem. I decided to use it in Matlab R2009a, with ubuntu 14.04. This is the error I get while running vl_setup()

    ??? XML-file failed validation against schema located in:
    /home/tonystark/Matlab_prg/sys/namespace/info/v1/info.xsd

    XML-file name:
    /home/tonystark/freelancing/Content_based_image_retrieval/code/new_code/vlfeat-0.9.18/toolbox/info.xml
    To retest the XML-file against the schema, call the following java method:
    com.mathworks.xml.XMLValidator.validate(...
'/home/tonystark/freelancing/Content_based_image_retrieval/code/new_code/vlfeat-0.9.18/toolbox/info.xml',...
    '/home/tonystark/Matlab_prg/sys/namespace/info/v1/info.xsd', true)

    Errors:
    org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: cvc-complex-type.2.4.a: Invalid content was found
    starting with element 'help_contents_icon'. One of '{product_name_ends_with_type,
    help_addon, preference_panel, dialogpref_registrar, project_plugin, state_item, list}'
    is expected.

But when I run the same code again, the error doesn't come and the code vl_setup compiles, but no output displayed

And when I run this sample code

    clc;
    close all;
    clear all;

    I1 = imread('/home/tonystark/freelancing/Content_based_image_retrieval/Dataset/all_souls_000140.jpg');
    I2 = imread('/home/tonystark/freelancing/Content_based_image_retrieval/Dataset/all_souls_000146.jpg');

    [f1 d1] = vl_sift(single(rgb2gray(I1)));
    [f2 d2] = vl_sift(single(rgb2gray(I2)));

matlab crashes with the following error on the terminal

    *** invalid %N$ use detected ***
    Aborted (core dumped)

I am stuck here for quite some time without any specific direction. If somebody can point me in the right direction or solve this, it would be of great help! Your help is much appreciated.

UPDATE 1

The readme file of vlfeat says it requires matlab 2009b min, for the toolbox to work. could that be a reason?