Anthony Thorne

Thank you for the advice, but it isn't doing anything to change the situation. My machine has a name (followed your link and reconfirmed what it was). That name doesn't show up at all in the License Server screen though. My experience with the license server differs from my original paragraph above in that now, the entire breakdown is a list of (not running) messages, and a series of three red crosses beneath it, all of which advise me that the license server isn't running, the license server may not serve licenses, and that the license server does not allow this machine to read licenses. So, bad news all around I take it.

The troubleshooting page seems to suggest that if the License Server isn't opening on my computer, my Macbook graphics card might not be robust enough to handle Houdini. My Macbook has an AMD Radeon HD 6750M. If this is the reason and I need to wait for a future Macbook upgrade then I'll delete the software for the time being and come back if and when my hardware can ever match the software specs.

Okay, while typing away I just noticed the Admin message that I previously missed. My license server is too old (4.x or older) and I need to upgrade to version 14.0.201.13. How can I do this? Thank you for any help.

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but -

License server gives me ‘Invalid machine name’ during the licensing process for my just downloaded copy of Apprentice. So, I'm guessing it's connecting, getting halfway through the process, and then deciding it's unhappy with something, somewhere.

That particular error message helpfully tells me I can go to
http://license.sidefx.com/get_nc_license.php [license.sidefx.com]

to get a license there. I click on ‘Server Information’ to get a server name and code for the licensing webpage, and I get

Licensing mode: sesinetd licensing
Connected to: (null).local
License server host:
License server code: da8d5e5b
License server version: 4.x or older

Tick - The license server is running
Red cross - The license server may not serve licenses
Tick - The license server allows license modifications from this machine.

I'm on a 3 or 4 year-old non-retina 15" Macbook, 8Gb Ram, OSX Mavericks 10.9.2. Should I just try again later (tomorrow night) or am I missing something?

Not panicking but the helpful solution to get a license manually seems to itself fall short with the server host line being blank, so I have nothing to enter into the ‘Server name’ field'.

I'll go and have a good night's sleep and check this forum again tomorrow to see what I've missed. Thank you!