Licensing: Combining licenses and case sensitivity for the servername

I recently experienced an interesting problem and an a relatively easy fix.  We had setup the license server properly and the also generated licenses on the same issue date.  The customer had 5 x AutoCAD and an additional AutoCAD x 1 on the license server.

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/11/quick-start-setting-up-a-license-server.html

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/10/general-licensing-the-importance-of-the-issue-date.html

In this instance, the server name in one of the license files was UPPERCASE and the other license file, the server name in was lowercase.  The license file was then combined manually using Notepad.   In theory, this should have worked but the server would not start and the lmgrd.exe would not start.  

The solution was to:

1.  Remove the duplicate server lines from the license file.

SERVER YOUR-server-NAME 00xx00xx00xx00
USE_SERVER
VENDOR adskflex port=20802.  Change the server name so that they are exactly it has the same case.

The problematic license file is below:

Thanks to Chantal Seguin for confirming that this solution worked.

TIP:

When appending licenses, you can also comment out the repeated sections as well.

#SERVER YOUR-server-NAME 00xx00xx00xx00
#USE_SERVER
#VENDOR adskflex port=2080

Epilogue

I recently found out that using the new LMTOOLS (11.12) and keeping the servername with a different case will not work at all.  There will be an error and the license server will not startup.

Comments

[Jimmy Bergmark - JTB World]

When combining licenses it is always best to take this approach: Copy everything except the first three rows (rows starting with SERVER, USE_SERVER and VENDOR) from the other license file and insert between row 3 and 4 or at the bottom of the new license file.

[David Lau]

I totally agree! I will also use comments (#) to ensure that the SERVER license file was created on the correct MAC/ethernet address. I have had customers change the MAC/ethernet address of a license file and expecting it to work. The only part of the license that can be changed is the 'server name' and 'port' numbers.

[Tracy Davis]

thanks for this. It has been this way for quite sometime. I remember having to correct this quite a few times with the 2010 release, especially with schools. The same holds true for the mac address, if there are different cases in that, LMTools will be messed up. ADLM will read the license file, with no errors, but the correct number of seats will not show. Have you all seen the issue with 2013 licenses not showing because 2012 licenses are still in the license file? Great feature for "deactivating" older licenses using the same feature code, once you remove the 2012 licenses, the file is read correctly.

[David Lau]

Thanks for sharing your experiences [tips] with the community.