Is the hardware address required for a flexlm client license.

When creating a client flexlm license we have traditionally used:

SERVER "<fully qualified domain name>" "<hardware address>" port

USE_SERVER

We have tested this without the hardware address and it seems to still work perfectly. Is there any issue not using the hardware address in the client license server file as shown above?

Answer 1

[Ori]

According to the Flexnet publisher documentation, the format of the SERVER line is:

SERVER host hostid [port] [PRIMARY_IS_MASTER] [HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL=seconds]

Your 'host' is the IP address or hostname.

The hostid is "the string returned by the lmhostid command. This is changed only by your publisher."

So the answer depends on the output of the lmhostid command. Please run

lmutil lmhostid

from the license manager folder location to check it out.

Ori Kaplan

OpenLM - Engineering Software License Management

Check out our MATLAB license management capabilities

[David Morrisette]

Hi Ori, Thanks for your response. Although the format you mentioned above is required for the server, I am not certain about the hostid requirement on the client side of the equation.

So... I am looking to confirm that not using the hostid (aka hardware address) on the SERVER line of a client license file will not cause some unintended problems that I am not seeing.

Make sense?

More details below:

When I run ./lmutil lmhostid (on another product's flexlm server) (I do not run the Matlab license server) I get the hardware address. I know for the SERVER line on the license server the hostid (hardware address) is required or the lmgrd daemon will not launch successfully, however we have tested running without the hostid on the client licenses and it appears to work just fine.

As a test, if you go into the licenses directory under your Matlab installation directory, copy the network.lic file to network.backup, edit your network.lic file and take out the hardware address on the "SERVER" line, and the second line should say "USE_SERVER", I think you will see that your Matlab will run fine.

It appears to me, at this point, unless someone can tell me otherwise, that all the Matlab client needs to work successfully is the fully qualified domain name (or ip address) of the license server and the port the license server is communicating on.

The reason this is significant is that if the license server should be moved to a different machine with a different hardware address, and we use the hardware address in our client licenses, we then have to reach out to hundreds of machines to make sure an update is done to the client licenses. If we can run the client license without any hardware address in the "SERVER" line, then if the license server is run on a different computer the client license would not fail because of the bad "lmhostid" (aka hardware address) on the client license "SERVER" line. Of course, this supposes that the fully qualified domain name of the license server is made to point to the new license server.

Answer 2

[Ori]

Hi David.

1. I verified similar behaviour using an Autodesk license on my machine (I don't have MATLAB installed on it). I could check out a Flexlm license either with or without the MAC address specified on the LICPATH.LIC file (similar to network.lic).

2. Regarding "have to reach out to hundreds of machines" - I admit I am not impartial, but I actually do have a solution to the specific need you have raised. I therefore feel unconstrained in my answer: My company has implemented the "OpenLM Router" . This module provides a single point of access to all clients, and will eliminate the need to "reach out" to clients. Please contact us offline if you require any assistance.

Ori Kaplan

OpenLM - Engineering Software License Management

Answer 3

[Jay Akers]

Hi David and others searching this topic,

From my experience, for many years connecting to our centrally-run license server, the clients were able to run without the server's hostid in the client's license file.

However, I have setup my own server, and the clients get a license error -97 unless I put the server's hostid in their license file. I suspect it's something in how the server is setup. They have no problem if I use the MLM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable port@hostname (or port@IP) instead (which doesn't require the hostid). I have generally found the environment variable easier to work with on large deployments (can easily change through Group Policy in a MSWin AD), but most of my users seem more comfortable with the license files.

If anyone has insight on what server license manager setup causes the need for the hostid in the client file, I'd love to know.

[Scott Copus]

*edited: sorry, text formatting is terrible on here.

Hi all,

After I installed MATLAB R2018a, I edited my <INSTALLPATH>\licenses\network.lic from its default of:

SERVER <hostname> <hostid/macaddress> <port>

USE_SERVER

to either of these formats below and the license still gets properly checked out from my license server:

1. removing my hostid since clients don't really need to know this anyway:

SERVER MYHOSTNAME 0 27005

USE_SERVER

1. using a DNS alias and also leaving out the hostid completely still works too:

SERVER My_DNS_alias 27005

USE_SERVER

cheers, Scott