lc_hostid Behavior Question

[TobiaszJason]

As so I do not have to find these hardware configurations, please as to be answering these questions:

What is the behavior when trying to retrieve the HOSTID_ETHER using lc_hostid when no NIC card is installed?

What is the behavior when trying to retrieve the HOSTID_ETHER using lc_hostid when multiple NIC cards are installed?

[RobertDickau]

From the FLEXnet Programming and Reference Guide topic "lc_hostid" (1):

If a request is made for a valid type that is not currently present on the machine, such as HOSTID_FLEXID6 on Windows, lc_hostid returns an error.

And for (2), from same topic:

Note that lc_hostid may return a space-separated list of hostids, if appropriate.

[TobiaszJason]

Thanks RobertDickau, you're always so helpful.

The problem that I'm running into is that I want to tie the licensing down to something unique, however, the disk serial number is just not going to cut it anymore as it is just too easy to spoof it.

While I have considered doing vendor defines, tying the license down to CPUID and a dozen or so hardware serials, there just does not seem like there is a clear path to roll on as there is not a solution that will work on ALL of the platforms we want to support. See: http://community.installshield.com/showthread.php?t=171230

If there is such a way to uniquely tie down licenses, by all means, please let me know--short of requiring users to authenticate their license on a remote server as some of our customers must remain on a closed I/O net.

That being said, I'm thinking about doing a composite ID with disk serial numbers and NIC card mac addresses. If the user doesn't have a NIC card, than we'll just bite the bullet and just use the disk serial number, if the user has one or many NIC cards, than we'll use the disk serial number + primary NIC card as a composite HOSTID.

Do you see any issues with this approach, or would you recommend something else?

[RobertDickau]

What you describe sounds similar to the advice in the P&R "Composite Hostids" chapter. (I'm not familiar with the problems you mention with the techniques listed in your other thread, so I can't really speak to that.) You've presumably also seen Getting Started with the FLEXnet Publisher Licensing Toolkit, which describes some drawbacks with particular HOSTID types (in any case, it seems you're aware of the ease of spoofing the disk serial number, for example).

If you haven't yet, you might also look into using trusted storage, the "binding" feature of which uses a sort of composite hostid to tie the license rights to a particular system...

[TobiaszJason]

I'm reading the FlexNet Licensing Tutorial for Trusted Storage-Based Licensing.

What prevents the user from ghosting the machine? Would trusted storage-based licensing prevent against allowing multiple licenses for ghosted machines?

[RobertDickau]

My understanding is that if the Ghost image differs in some hardware identifier or hard-drive track zero or the like, a binding or anchoring break should be triggered; the Programming and Reference Guide for Trusted Storage-based Licensing describes the various binding and anchoring identities.