Putting this here for reference. Could be that my problems were an edge case (like the rest of my existence, ha) but just in case it helps someone…

Unlike previous upgrades, the move to 18.5 gave me real problems with licensing on my linux machines.

Sesictrl kept timing out, saying:

Licence Manager - machinename:1715 Timeout was reached
ERROR: You do not have read access to server machinename

After many hours, I sussed it: Sesictrl has started (?) trying to contact the server using the machine's name, rather than internally looping back, or using the machine's IP address. So the solution was simple in the end:

Add the machine's own name to /etc/hosts. There's probably already a line to resolve localhost to the 127.0.0.1, so just add the machine's name to the end of that line:

127.0.0.1 localhost machinename

All is well and my various machines are working again. But that cost a fair bit of time to sort out…

tags: sesictrl license problem timing out