Urgent help needed: Licensing snafu following server crash

[Ron Kracht]

Brian K. White wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fairlight" <fairlite at fairlite.com>
> To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:12 AM
> Subject: Re: Urgent help needed: Licensing snafu following server crash
>
>
>   
>> Is it just me, or did Brian K. White say:
>>     
>>> filepro, even with the simple licence file in 5.0.15 not even the licence
>>> manager daemon, is functionaly broken for me. I can't use it. I actually 
>>> can
>>> not use it. I can't live with the potential for even 12 or even 6 hours 
>>> of a
>>> box being down due to a broken filepro licence while we wait for 
>>> filepro's
>>> business hours to roll around. Early mornings happen to be my customers
>>> highest critical time and losing half the morning until 8 or 9 am astern 
>>> or
>>> central comes around is not tolerable.
>>>       
>> It would be aggravating as hell to me, expensive for my clients, but it's
>> hardly a case of being wholly unsuitable.  I mean, let's be realistic
>> here...some companies lose tens of thousands of dollars if the electricity
>> fails for a few seconds--literally.  Does that make the local power grid
>> "functionally broken" for them on the whole?  Of course not.
>>
>> I think you're being a bit melodramatic regarding the (unlikely) impact.
>> I'm obviously no fan of license schemes, every last one of which is flawed
>> unless program use -requires- an active central server constantly (MMO's
>> have the -only- real protection that works, and they are really a service
>> more than the initial software).  That hardly makes everything that has
>> a license manager (or worse) unusable.  If it does, don't tell all the
>> CAD users with dongles in play.  And if some prankster walks off with a
>> dongle, you really think it'll be replaced freely?  How long for shipping?
>> Comparatively, fP users still have it ok--just not ideal.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but putting it into perspective, some very busy, very important
>> companies ate a very large outage on 9/11/01 and for at least a week
>> afterwards, and in more than their software working, I might add.  I'm
>> betting 95%+ survived and are still in business.  Let's be pragmatic 
>> enough
>> to accurately call licence enforcement what it is: stupid, a waste of R&D
>> funds, and annoying.  But it's a calculated risk, like anything else, and 
>> a
>> fairly low one at that.  If it's triggered, it's a cost of doing business
>> with many major vendors, like it or not.  If a company has no disaster or
>> emergency plan in place that the could choose to implement or not 
>> depending
>> on perceived loss/exposure, then someone isn't doing their job adequately
>> somewhere.  Tossing effective software over -potential- license failure is
>> ridiculous--planning for things that can be anticipated for isn't.  Does 
>> it
>> cost more?  Yes.  But that's the cost of doing business properly.
>>
>> Now -stupid- is -requiring- a net connection to activate at all.  Like
>> Adobe and a growing number of others that are alienating people whose
>> policies may not allow it even if the physical link is present.  Again, fP
>> doesn't sound so bad by comparison.
>>     
>
> I _will_ modify every box that has users overnight some time or other.
> Sometimes a box will go years without needing to be replaced or majorly 
> repaired or cloned off to some other physical location, other times I may 
> need to do something like that every night for a week. The users never know 
> the difference given that they just log in to my_company.aljex.com and I 
> point their hostname wherever I just copied their code to, if I had to move 
> it anywhere. This type of change will _always_ happen over night or over a 
> weekend or other holiday when it is planned, and only during business hours 
> when it is unplanned.
>
> That _will_ break that boxes fp license, as far as I understand it so far.
>
>   
You do not correctly understand.

You can run the license server on any LAN accessible system and use the 
environment variable PFLMHOST to point the license code to that system 
for license validation. We have customers who use that feature to serve 
both Unix and Windows licenses from the same Unix server - running 2 
copies of the license server each listening on a different port..

Additionally one of the valid license checks on *nix systems is for 
hostname. Even if you choose to use a different license check as long 
you copy both the license file and the backup license file to the new 
machine you will be able to operate for the 7 day grace period during 
which time you are expected to contact fPTech and arrange to create and 
download a new license file.

Ron