We are deploying new licensing with the 11.8. Anybody got lessons learned?
llandale - Thu Jul 21 17:00:15 EDT 2011 |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 I know sometimes my posts irritate you but not on purpose, i promise.... We have a pool of 5 license server sets running at our sites. 2 are running on 11.4 2 are running on 11.5 1 is running on 11.9 The license server admin has been working thru this same stuff recently. The one had to go to 11.9 to support another tool that required it and thus created the change issue you are describing in your post. I believe he has it running with the telelogic DAEMON now. I will see if I can find out how these 3 different ones are set and get back here with a post. I believe that the "every instance of a license checkout was only for a DOORS v9.2 client... and reverted back to 9.1 and earlier or 9.3 and later now went back to a single pc can run multiple instances of DOORS without checking out multiple licenses...i recall seeing it somewhere up here on the support site in the recent past this year. Additionally...we have run into several occurances of DOORS license checkouts becoming "phantom checkouts" eg. yesterday I briefly ran a DOORS v9.1 client to connect to a DOORS v9.2 database and the license checked out correctly, however even though i logged out gracefully from a pc client only minutes later, today that license still is shown as checked out from yesterday...furthermore...it actually associated my pc session and my DOORS user login name with our DOORS v9.2 server which also has DWA 1.4.0.2 running... this is where it is strange... I did not login yesterday via a DWA session on that server...furthermore...when i did login via DWA today the license server shows an additional licnese checks out to me..then when i log out gracefully from the DWA session that new checkout goes away as it should...however the "phantom checkout remains". Note: I have also checked that my user has no locks in the said DOORS database just in case it would be thinking it had stale locks left...even though i never did go beyond Read Only mode while in DWA or from the client. Bottom Line is that more wierd stuff is beginning to surface with these changes coming to us via v11.8 and v11.9.... I am wondering about submitting a PMR to see what IBM License Support may know or want to know.... Right now the only way to clear the phantom checkout is via a license.dat file bounce "reread" or "stop and restart" gsdguy |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 SystemAdmin - Tue Aug 02 15:48:52 EDT 2011 |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 SystemAdmin - Tue Aug 02 15:48:52 EDT 2011 Its been my experience that first Telelogic and now IBM are not interested in PMRs unless I can prove it objectively in such a way they can reproduce it on the first try. Since this feels like a timing issue its doubtful we can reproduce it. But, perhaps a go-nowhere PMR will bring their attention to it. I think you can use lmutil from the command prompt to force checking in licenses; I just don't have time for figuring that out now. Are you saying that re-reading the license file does not disturb existing users but does release the phantom licenses? That would be good to know. Are you saying for you that these phantom licenses do not clear themselves up over time? Since they did for us (after exactly 3 hours), then perhaps its a setting. Do you have your 5 license servers daisy-chained on the clients TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE variable? p@server1;p@server2 etc.
Sent you a PM. |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 SystemAdmin - Tue Aug 02 15:53:56 EDT 2011 Sure does seem like the new licensing has some "issues". We have "Vendors" in the license file: ... telelogic, rational, ibmratl but are only using ibmratl.exe (moved telelogic.exe away and never found rational.exe). Have no idea what that means or what a "Daemon" is or if it matters.
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Re: New Licensing v11.8 llandale - Tue Aug 02 17:43:59 EDT 2011
Sent you a PM. Yep...we tried the reread of the license.dat file of license server holding the phantom checkout Wednesday morning and it did indeed reassign\or continue to associate the phantom checkout from Monday at 10:46am. I also tried logging in again and it checked out another one and handed it back like it should. furthermore...that phantom checkout just dissappeared as of this morning when i first checked. So that means it took our license.dat file from Monday at 10:46am until sometime after i left work yesterday and checked it at 8:30am this morning to release it...slightly longer than 54 hours... As you have so noted...with your token system and phantoms...you began to experience not enough total licenses for number of users wanting one...we have been concerned it would impact us the same way. So far...lucky that we have an excess (more licenses than users) but we have come very close. And if we happen to lose a license server somewhere due to other hw problems...these phantom checkouts are not going to help us... Yes...we have a pool that includes 5 of our Global flex license servers3 are triads & 2 are single server (global licenses allowed to share across geographical distance between our DOORS sites) and they are in a list of precedence based upon which business unit the pc belongs to. eg. they pull from the license server that their business unit pays for license + annual maintenance first...if they are all used or the server is down for some reason...they can get one from the next server in the list that belongs to a same business unit license server but at a distant site....yesterday we even watched a doors client that had a license pulled from a license server that was stopped..that doors client then went to the list pulled a license from the next one and kept running like nothing happened except a new checkout on the next one. at the same time my pc was running doors with only the single license server that was stopped...my doors session died. -gsdguy |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 SystemAdmin - Thu Aug 04 09:06:20 EDT 2011 Don't see any sort of parameter in the LMTOOLs, LMUTIL nor the registry, I wonder if perhaps its some sort of license file parameter. Oh well.
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Re: New Licensing v11.8 llandale - Thu Aug 04 14:37:40 EDT 2011
All of the smarts for validating license check-outs, check-ins, general house keeping etc is managed by these Daemons which are created by each vendor. Whilst the FlexLM\FlexNet LM Utility commands allow you to circumvent and override some of the functions of a License Daemon, I'm pretty sure that the job of clearing up phantom\residual check-outs is up to the License Daemon - if it won't do it - the LM Util command "lmremove" will allow you to manually check them back in. Paul Miller Melbourne, Australia |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 llandale - Thu Aug 04 14:37:40 EDT 2011
In the same folder as the license & the daemon file (Telelogic.exe), you add an options file Telelogic.opt. It must be the same name as the daemon. It is a text (notepad) file. In it you put: # in order to release idle licenses for use by others after 2 hours. TIMEOUTALL 7200 # = comment Cycle the service to pick it up. In the log you will see: “(telelogic) ALL FEATURES: INACTIVITY TIMEOUT set to 7200 seconds” It will drop inactive licenses. The Timeout is in seconds. Home this helps, Otherwise you have to cycle the license service to drop a hung connection. I am not an expert by any means when it comes to the flexlm tool but this may help. |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 HiLbiLy - Fri Aug 05 10:54:57 EDT 2011 As per Paul I "lmremove" a license but noticed that DOORS kept running. After 45 minutes I noticed that DOORS was still running but it had acquired a new license. Woot. Now we can kick someone off if we MUST get in there and it probably won't interfere with them. Problem is identifying which license is orphaned. As for this, it appears there is a Flex options file and also a DAEMON options file that may have the same format. Does DOORS support releasing licenses?
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Re: New Licensing v11.8 llandale - Fri Aug 05 15:43:49 EDT 2011
Over the last month or so I have been blessed (or cursed) with some time on my hands and I have devoted much of it to learning and creating tools to manage licenses. Next week I am going to be involved in some other work largely away from DOORS, so as a result I am writing this post for two reasons. First much of it applies to this post, likely helping some of you, and second as a way for me to remember the avenues I have explored with regards to licensing. The first thing I did with my exploration into licensing was to create a DXL script that creates a batch file utilizing the lmutil.exe feature pulling all of the license server(s) information. The script then breaks down this information to check the whether the license servers are up and running. If a server is down the DXL will send out an immediate email warning me that a server is down. The script makes a summary of the licenses servers (I have 6 license servers that I keep an eye on) and calculates some statistics as well as emails users that have been logged in past a certain time constraint (12 hours). This DXL is then run via batch every ½ hour, although users are only sent emails a certain time during the day (7:00 am). The second thing I did was to create an extensive license statistics system that runs every half hour that tracks statistics (user/hours, licenses/hour/day, max licenses/day/week, avg. licenses/day/week, and licenses/server/week). This allows me to profile our license usage over time and analyze the amount of licenses are used who, when, and where, so I will have a better idea of how many to renew each year. Another task has been to transition an old license server to a new license server. Because of the transition I have had some time to experiment with a license server that the users have no functional knowledge of yet and do some testing that I would not be willing to do if it was in use by my users. I feel no guilt for screwing it up because I am not impacting my users since the license string has yet to be rolled out to everyone. Lastly, the first two tasks allowed me to experience some weird behaviors with licensing, and the third a viable option to play. As a result I have learned some things that this community might find valuable: 1) To pull the license information create a batch file that looks like the following: "Path to lmutil.exe" lmstat –c "port@server" –a > "Outfile" Example: "C:\Program Files\IBM\Rational\License Server\lmutil.exe" lmstat -c "19353@myLicenseServer" -a > "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop\19353@myLicenseServer.txt" Note you can insert “pause” after this line if you want to the response in the command line for debug or status. 2) There are two ways to use the “lmremove” but the style changes a little with the version of lmtools that you are using. If you just run the following you can see the style that you need: "Path to lmutil.exe" lmremove –c "port@server" pause Example: "C:\Program Files\IBM\Rational\License Server\lmutil.exe" lmremove -c 19353@myLicenseServer pause For the 11.5.0.0 version (2007) you have the following options: a) "Path to lmutil.exe" lmremove –c "port@server" feature user host display where feature = DOORS, user = the user with the license you want to kick (found in the result of step 1), host = host computer, display = display computer. There is only a difference between the host and display if you are using a remote login. If this is the case host is the remote computer and display it the machine you are sitting at. Another thing to note is that if the user name is separated with spaces you MUST use option b. b) "Path to lmutil.exe" lmremove –c "port@server" –h feature host port handle where feature = DOORS, host = license server, port = port number (usually 19353 or maybe 27000), and handle = license number (found in the result of step 1). 3) I haven’t tried this but according to the internet and IT you can kick all the stale locks by Stop, Start, and Reread. You should probably research this before implementing to make sure that I am correct. In the same folder as the license & the daemon file (Telelogic.exe), you add an options file Telelogic.opt. It must be the same name as the daemon. It is a text file. In it you put:
Cycle the service to pick it up. In the log you will see: “(telelogic) ALL FEATURES: INACTIVITY TIMEOUT set to 7200 seconds” It will drop all inactive licenses. However if the active users do not have another license server to jump to they will lose all of their work while the license server is down. ACTIVE USERS MUST BE ABLE TO MOVE TO ANOTHER LICENSE SERVER WHILE THE LICENSE SERVER IS SHUT DOWN OR IT MIGHT CAUSE BAD THINGS TO HAPPEN!!! See observation #4. 4) While testing the new license server I was able to kick myself off. If I kick myself and there was another license available either at that specific license server or another license server, I would not notice anything at all. DOORS would just picked up another license and run with it. However if there was not another license available you would get booted, unsaved work and all. 5) You can also do observations 2 and 3 from your PC WITHOUT actual access to the license server, so you can boot users from any PC with access to that computer. 6) You CAN shutdown the license server using the lmtools ShutDownServer Option. I did this from my PC not the actual license server. I have admin access to some license servers but not all license servers. I read online that the server shutdown checks if you have admin access to that machine but I can’t confirm. I did have admin access to the server I shutdown, but I still shut it down from my PC. 7) You CAN’T start a service from your PC that I am aware of. The problem is that you need to locate the license file and log file. This might be possible if you had folder sharing to the location of the files, but I didn’t try that hard to set this up since this would help with any licenses server which I didn’t have direct access and restarting a service is rare so I just let my IT deal with that. 8) Running batch files on the DOORS data server seems to cause stale license checkouts (a least on one of my data servers). I was running one of the two above mentioned scripts on my DOORS data server with a client installation of DOORS v9.1. The other was run at my desk computer with no problems. The data server had hang ups even after using “lmremove”, which does kick the license off, but will have another stale lock appears sequentially (if the 1st is one week old, the 2nd may be 6 days old, the 3rd may be 3 days, 4th may be 3 hours, etc.) until I get to the current time of day. Once I get to the current time, it will remove the stale lock and everything will be clear…for a minute then another will appear. All licenses have different license numbers and checkout times. The data server has been restarted once, clearing up the stale lock for a short time, then it start acting funny again. I have completely stopped the scheduled tasked and removed my batch files and DXLs from the data servers as well as completely removed the DOORS client. However it STILL checks out a license (WITHOUT THE DOORS CLIENT). I suspect that the server needs to be restarted, but since it is my data server I will just wait until our monthly IT updates to restart the server. I removed my DXL batch file from the data server and installed it at another machine, I have run it for about a week now and have had no stale locks. I realize my sample set is not huge so it could just be a fluke. Hopes this helps someone. HiLbiLy |
Re: New Licensing v11.8 HiLbiLy - Wed Aug 10 11:07:48 EDT 2011
Cycle the service to pick it up. In the log you will see: “(telelogic) ALL FEATURES: INACTIVITY TIMEOUT set to 7200 seconds” It will drop all inactive licenses. However if the active users do not have another license server to jump to they will lose all of their work while the license server is down. ACTIVE USERS MUST BE ABLE TO MOVE TO ANOTHER LICENSE SERVER WHILE THE LICENSE SERVER IS SHUT DOWN OR IT MIGHT CAUSE BAD THINGS TO HAPPEN!!! See observation #4. 4) While testing the new license server I was able to kick myself off. If I kick myself and there was another license available either at that specific license server or another license server, I would not notice anything at all. DOORS would just picked up another license and run with it. However if there was not another license available you would get booted, unsaved work and all. 5) You can also do observations 2 and 3 from your PC WITHOUT actual access to the license server, so you can boot users from any PC with access to that computer. 6) You CAN shutdown the license server using the lmtools ShutDownServer Option. I did this from my PC not the actual license server. I have admin access to some license servers but not all license servers. I read online that the server shutdown checks if you have admin access to that machine but I can’t confirm. I did have admin access to the server I shutdown, but I still shut it down from my PC. 7) You CAN’T start a service from your PC that I am aware of. The problem is that you need to locate the license file and log file. This might be possible if you had folder sharing to the location of the files, but I didn’t try that hard to set this up since this would help with any licenses server which I didn’t have direct access and restarting a service is rare so I just let my IT deal with that. 8) Running batch files on the DOORS data server seems to cause stale license checkouts (a least on one of my data servers). I was running one of the two above mentioned scripts on my DOORS data server with a client installation of DOORS v9.1. The other was run at my desk computer with no problems. The data server had hang ups even after using “lmremove”, which does kick the license off, but will have another stale lock appears sequentially (if the 1st is one week old, the 2nd may be 6 days old, the 3rd may be 3 days, 4th may be 3 hours, etc.) until I get to the current time of day. Once I get to the current time, it will remove the stale lock and everything will be clear…for a minute then another will appear. All licenses have different license numbers and checkout times. The data server has been restarted once, clearing up the stale lock for a short time, then it start acting funny again. I have completely stopped the scheduled tasked and removed my batch files and DXLs from the data servers as well as completely removed the DOORS client. However it STILL checks out a license (WITHOUT THE DOORS CLIENT). I suspect that the server needs to be restarted, but since it is my data server I will just wait until our monthly IT updates to restart the server. I removed my DXL batch file from the data server and installed it at another machine, I have run it for about a week now and have had no stale locks. I realize my sample set is not huge so it could just be a fluke. Hopes this helps someone. HiLbiLy # = The Timeout is in seconds. This will release idle licenses for use by others after 2 hours. TIMEOUTALL 7200 # = comment |