verdell32

I started this thread discussion and today my license renewed. So my problem is now fixed. I hope everyone who had the same problem as I did; I hope you get up and running soon.

Thanks again.

I would just like to thank Lucas for writing back because your input on the situation is more valuable than mine. I am a programmer myself; I am currently attending college to obtain my “Computer Science Degree” so I know things go wrong from time to time. I would appreciate it if you could let us know when the license server is back up. My license expired on January 25th and I didn't find out until the other day because I use so many packages: Maya 6, 3D Studio Max 7, Lightwave 8.5, Cinema 4D , and for a time Houdini, etc.

Thanks to everyone who had input on this topic.

CSIL-specific notes

In order to access the Web from the CSIL, you will have to set up your favorite web browser to use an HTTP proxy. The proxy server is proxy.sfu.ca port 8080. You will have to enter your ACS (CSIL) username and password to get through the proxy.
Houdini

Houdini lives in /usr/local/pkg/Houdini/Houdini_v7.0/ on the CSIL lab graphics workstations. In order to run Houdini, you first have to set up the Houdini working environment:

% cd /usr/local/pkg/Houdini/Houdini_v7.0
% source houdini_setup

The Houdini apprentice edition that we are using requires a per-person, per-machine 30-day (renewable) license. Because of security restrictions on the CSIL network, the normal licensing procedure does not work. Please follow the instructions below for now. We are looking into ways of making this easier in the future.

(1) Save this script to your home directory and give it execute permissions (chmod +x houdini_start.csh). This script will set up your Houdini environment, start the Houdini license server, and register the the license you will obtain in step 2.

(2a) run

% ./hkey
Go to the menu ->, and in the window, click on , then and quit.

(2b) To obtain your license to run Houdini on a particular machine, run sesictrl -n to obtain the name and ID code of the machine you will use. The required code is the 8-digit code at the end of the program output. Visit this web site, enter the name and code and submit it. You will get three lines of text that look something like this:

SERVER foo.csil.sfu.ca f1356200 d7348b0hg8fef2b43c9ma4dffg5d1w3242w4b16e65c67
LICENSE Generic Houdini-Master-NonCommercial 5.5 1 14-feb-2003 +.+.+.+ foo.csil.sfu.ca defyc369 e7915f745d6me6s54mb73sm557m70s654fm74s67d1443
LICENSE Generic Render-NonCommercial 5.5 1 14-feb-2003 +.+.+.+ foo.csil.sfu.ca 79gd5859 2d41ae5654n1sanb4f5fnordt346ot5ns9r9b34cccb97

Copy and paste these three lines (not these ones, but the ones you got from the aforementioned website!) to a text file and save it in your account. Make sure the long lines are not broken up into multiple lines.

(3) Run the start script from step 1 with the name of the file you saved the license data to. For example, if you saved the data to license_emerald.txt in step 2, run houdini_start.csh license_emerald.txt.

(4) To verify that everything worked, run the command sesictrl -i and look at the output. It should show something like this:

—– SERVER foo.csil.sfu.ca ——–
Lic 18a52112: 1 “Houdini-Master-NonCommercial 5.5” Generic 18-feb-2003 +.+.+.+
1 licenses free

Lic 4fe1da85: 1 “Render-NonCommercial 5.5” Generic 18-feb-2003 +.+.+.+
1 licenses free

(5) To start Houdini, just type houdini.

(6) When you are done, do killall sesinetd hserver to stop your license daemons. This is to prevent them from causing problems for other Houdini users.

If your license runs out (30 days) or you log into a different machine, you will have to repeat steps 2-6. Otherwise, you should only have to do steps 3, 5 and 6.
AL