Hope someone has come across this and sussed it out!

I'm trying to get the Houdini 5 Apprentice Edition working and
am having problems with the licensing.

The workstation is a linux 7.2 box and the server is an SGI running 6.5.5m Irix

On the SGI, running

sesictl -v
gives:
sesinetd: Version 5.5.3

So the server that's running there (and I did kill of fthe old server daemons from 4.X)
is the v5.5.3 license server, no doubt about it.

However, :evil: , when I run “houdini” on the linux box it fails to find a license server
with a license and spawns hkey (and some hserver processes). hkey makes the
following claims:
License server version: 4.X or older
The license server does not allow license modifications from this machine.


So hkey on the linux workstation thinks that the server on the SGI is older than it
actually is and so won't play nicely…If I stop the license server, hkey on the linux
box does indeed detect that its not there.

Should there be a problem with the linux software speaking to the SGI license server?
Any ideas?

Cheers,
Malc…

Hmm… Although I am using both Windows machines, my Houdini license server is on a seperate computer than my workstation. But even from my workstation, I can't change anything about the license (not that I need to) from my workstation eventhough I am in windows-windows environment. The only way for me to add new key was via remote desktop.


Not sure if this is applicable to your situation as well.

On the side note, I am running the exact same version of Houdini5.5 on the server and the workstaion.

Try starting sesinetd with the -m ‘+.*.*.*’ option. This allows hosts on different subnets to access it.

I'm running Red Hat 7.3 and KDE. My Houdini license server and workstation are on the same machine. I was getting a similar ‘running older License Server 4.x error.’

When first attempting to run Houdini Apprentice I received a message stating that I was running an older License Server 4.x and needed to install a newer 5.5 version. I clicked view>Diagnostic Information. My system info came up with localhost.localdomain info, etc. The diagnostics showed I was running License Server 4.x. In the Houdini License Administrator dialogue box, I clicked File>Change License Server. The text box displayed ‘localhost.localdomain’. I clicked the ‘Local server’ button, and ‘localhost.localdomain’ changed to my computer name, ‘Apollo’. Then, in a cshell, entered ‘source houdini_setup’, then entered ‘houdini’. I was prompted by a new dialogue box and asked If I wanted to install a non-commercial license. And now Houdini is up and running.

-Joe

Just a few notes that might explain what happened:

- If the license server (sesinetd) is not running, hkey will incorrectly report the sesinetd version as “4.x or older”, instead of saying it's not running.

- Licenses cannot be created for machines named localhost or localhost.localdomain.

- Houdini Apprentice non-commercial licenses have an IP mask of +.+.+.+. This means that the license server machine must be the same machine as the one running Houdini/mantra. So, although a Linux version of Houdini or mantra is capable of using a separate license server running on an SGI, it's not possible for the SGI license server to serve non-commercial licenses to the Linux machine.

- The -m option to sesinetd specifies an IP mask to say which machines may connect to the license server. The default IP mask is +.+.+.*. If the Linux machine is on a different subnet than the SGI, the Linux machine won't have been able to connect to sesinetd and hkey may have incorrectly reported a 4.x version.

I just installed Linux to try it with Apprentice but I'm experiencing the same error that Joe talks about. At first the license server showed localhost.localdomain so I did as was suggested (changing the server name through File>Change Licensee Server to my computer name. It immediately showed that it was now running. But when I followed the rest of the steps and tried running houdini again, the License Server reverted back to localhost.localdomain.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

lucas
- If the license server (sesinetd) is not running, hkey will incorrectly report the sesinetd version as “4.x or older”, instead of saying it's not running.

Could this also happen if a firewall rule or other network problem is preventing a machine access to the license server?

Yes. Note that newer versions of 5.5 will correctly report that the license server is not running, instead of saying sesinetd 4.x is running. Upgrading to a newer version may help diagnose the problem.