HOSTID=DEMO License doesn't work

[amoswood]

We create demo licenses for our users to be able to try out our software which is licensed using FLEX. When creating the license, we use the term HOSTID=DEMO to specify that we don't care what the HOSTID actual is and then just date restrict the license.

This past week when helping a client to try and install our software, I found that the license file was not working on their computer. Using the same software and license file, it worked perfectly fine on mine, but not on theirs.

Demo License File:

###
### Workflow demo license
###

PACKAGE ALL edas 1.0 COMPONENTS="Workflow WF_DATABASES WF_NOISE \
	WF_PROJECTS WF_REPORTS WF_CLIENT" SIGN="0174 4531 2207 8263 \
	35B4 C442 0762 829B D01C 576E 0548 8A8E 3001 2A32 0F15 144E \
	CDF7 2285 B68E 405C 35BB 43A9 A6D6 019C C1CC 796F 30E3 21D4 \
	7193 E41F"
FEATURE ALL edas 1.0 31-dec-2010 uncounted HOSTID=DEMO SIGN="0BC9 \
	939C D2F6 6137 A463 991A 91DA A791 4DBD ADC0 F6E0 26B3 0EC7 \
	4C85 89BC 16CF 306B 40BA 5DA1 DA8E DB4E BA30 C5E0 96F2 31C9 \
	F794 5AE5 15F3 AE79 209B"

We use FLEX 11.4.1 and we were trying to install the license on a Windows Server 2003 machine.

Does anyone have an idea about why it wouldn't like this license file?

[RobertDickau]

Is there a particular FlexNet error code being returned? If it's "wrong hostid" for a demo license, that's surprising, of course; but perhaps the application isn't finding the license file?

[amoswood]

Unfortuneatly, our software didn't print out the error so I don't have access to it. I do know that it was finding the license file correctly since the same exact application was running and finding the license file correctly on my computer.

I can say though that in my effort to debug the problem, I create a nodelocked license that resided on a license server sitting on their WAN connected license server. Again if you tried to connect and obtain a license for that machine, it said that it couldn't obtain a license for that computer which is weird.

To further continue debugging the issue, if I create a served license that wasn't nodelocked, then the computer would successfully connect to their WAN license server and obtain a license.

I triple-checked the HOSTID for the nodelocked license and it was correct.

Does this new debug information tell you anymore ideas? Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Amos

P.S. I probably would be able to obtain an error code from Flex, but it would take a while to get.

[RobertDickau]

Perhaps see if setting the FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS environment to value 1, 2, or 3 (in increasing order of detail) on the target system creates and adds FlexNet error codes to flexpid.log when running the licensed product? The FNP license administration guide has a bit more information about what this does.

[notmyflexlm]

Wouldn't that be because it's a Windows server machine?

In my experience, any non-server based licenses won't work on the terminal server machines, regardless of what Host ID is listed.