21-Topaz I

Question

FlexNet/lmadmin

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
March 29, 2016
6 replies
8078 views

I haven't seen anything fairly recent about the new version.

We have users in different buildings. We constantly have problems where a duplicate license is taken. The users are not actually using two licenses. I believe what is happening is our network causes Creo to not be able to communicate fully. The FlexLM software we use can't figure out what's going on so it issues a second license to a user even though they are running only one session. This causes our available licenses to be used up at times.

I am hoping the new version of FlexNet will fix this.

1. Has anyone had any problems with FlexNet Admin License Server?

2. I haven't yet changed the default time-out in the ptc.opt file. I will be soon but I wonder what would happen in this situation. A user has a license and has a modified file. Doesn't save it but leaves for a meeting. The license server takes the license back because of the time-out. But when the user gets back there are no licenses available. Will the user still be able to save the file?

I also like the idea of web access in the new version since I don't have access to the server.

Licensing

MarcoTosin

21-Topaz I

Hi Steve,

we are using Web license since last year without any kind of issue.

Following David Haigh‌'s presentation I've also modified the default time-out from 7200 to 1200.

This way we have reduced the use of concurrent licenses without causing problems for users, because we have modified also two entries in config.pro to avoid the issue related to the license no longer used for a certain period of time.

Monitoring the use of Creo with Performance Advisor I have not encountered unexpected exits due to the use of licenses.

Marco

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

Thank you Marco.

I had looked at that presentation from David. That is part of the reason I asked my questions.

I still would like to know what happens in the situation I describe in #2. Would the user lose their work if there are no licenses available? I will probably change the time-out value, but that depends on that answer. I guess it should be ok since there are many, many companies that change it and I haven't heard of anyone saying it's a problem. However, I am still cautious and want to know for sure what would happen.

StephenW

23-Emerald III

It gives you options, SAVE, EXIT, or RETRY (license acquisition).

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

I have done some more testing.

A couple suggestions was to change the sleep option on the computer to None. Change the "Turn off the display" to Never. Changed the screen saver to None and also uncheck the "On resume, display login screen".

Some users had to make either 1, 2 or all three of these setting. However, there were a few that had these already set that way. We were still getting flexlm serving an extra license to users.

This is what I did as a test and it is fully repeatable. I have done this six times since yesterday. Four yesterday and twice today and it has happened every single time.

Started Creo.

Unplugged the network connection.

Started a CAD part model and created one feature.

Selected to save the file and got the License is lost dialog box.

Selected the Save button. It finished saving.

Dialog box only has Save, Exit and Retry. Left it alone.

Waited 15 minutes.

Plugged the network connection back in.

Selected Retry.

Got the message Regained network license.

Finished saving the model.

Checked the PTC status. I was issued a second license.

We had opened a call with PTC. I added a comment to the call on the web about this test and they responded within 5 or 10 minutes. He was transferring the call to a specialist.

Our FlexLM software is 10.8.10

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

Update:

One other thing we ended up changing was the default time-out of 2 hours down to 1 hour. I didn't want to cut it all the way down to 20 minutes. At least not yet.

However, whether it was changing the time-out or the setting changes mentioned in the above post for power and screen saver, etc., or a combination of them I don't know.

The program I have running that notifies me of duplicate does not notify me nearly as much anymore. There are still occasions but I actually believe a couple of them is because the user really has two licenses.

I have not heard back yet from PTC about the procedure I outlined above that is repeatable. I tried it again today to make sure and it still takes the extra license.

T

tpetersen

1-Visitor

Might you be inclined to share your "duplicate license notification" batch file?? This would certainly make my life easier as I sporadically run out of licenses sometimes due to crashes and/or hogs and need to know when I need to flush...

Much appreciated..

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

There might be better code but I'm not a pro in DOS. I know enough to get what I need.

First I made a copy of the ptcstatus.bat and removed a portion of the code. The reason for this is because if the output from ptcstat.bat is long then that command prompt windows will pause. I took that pause out.
I changed this line: %status_cmd% %forcea% %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 | more %more_flag%
To this: %status_cmd% %forcea% %1 %2 %3 %4 %5

Then I send the output of that new ptcstatus file to a text file. temp_ptc_stat.txt

I always have my computer logged in overnight (but locked) so it can run some programs late at night. Because of this I put in code to notify me only during certain hours but I still want the program to run. There are other things this program does. We have a plant in England so I want to be notified of their duplicates even though I am not here until it's noon their time.

for /f %%a in ('date/t') do set DAY=%%a
if /I %DAY%==Sat goto CLR_VARS
if /I %DAY%==Sun goto CLR_VARS

ver>nul
:: There is a reason for putting the "if %errorlevel%" line below. DOS says the numbers 8 & 9 is an invalid number used in this way.
:: Numeric constants are either decimal (17), hexadecimal (0x11), or octal (021).
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime ^| find "."') do set "dt=%%a"
set /A "HH=%dt:~8,2%"
if %errorlevel% NEQ 0 (
set /A "HH=%dt:~9,1%"
ver>nul
)

set /A "Min=%dt:~10,2%"

if %HH% LEQ 2 goto CLR_VARS
if %HH% GEQ 16 goto CLR_VARS

if %HH% EQU 15 (
if %Min% GEQ 30 (
goto CLR_VARS
))

findstr /C:" (" temp_ptc_stat.txt >> ls-a.txt
for /f "tokens=1 delims=() " %%x in (ls-a.txt) do echo %%x>>ls-b.txt
type ls-b.txt | sort > ls-c.txt

set COMP=<your computername>

type nul>ls-d.txt
for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (ls-c.txt) do (
(findstr /ic:"%%a" ls-d.txt || >>ls-d.txt echo.%%a)>nul
)

set /A C1=0
set /A C2=0
for /f %%a in (ls-c.txt) do set /A C1+=1
for /f %%b in (ls-d.txt) do set /A C2+=1
if %C1% NEQ %C2% set /A DIF=%C1%-%C2%
if %C1% NEQ %C2% msg /TIME:7200 <your username> /SERVER:%COMP% %DIF% Duplicate Creo License(s) Taken.
del ls-?.txt
del temp_ptc_stat.txt

:CLR_VARS
set C1=
set C2=
set HH=
etc.
etc.

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

PTC's said we should upgrade our version of FlexLM to FlexNet. Last Wednesday we updated to 11.11 without the web tools.

That has not fixed the problem. We still have users getting duplicate licenses even though they don't have a second session of Creo and I can still consistently replicate getting served a duplicate license.

Now they are asking to test adding a different port for the daemon in the license.dat file so we will try that tomorrow.

But what kind of disturbs me is they said PTC doesn't officially support FlexNet on VM. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

MarcoTosin

21-Topaz I

Steve,

have you tried to look into your Performance Advisor for Creo dashboard to verify if sessions are really duplicated?

I had users with duplicated licenses but in my dashboard I saw that they had different start time.

Marco

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

I have used PA but not much lately.

Sometimes I contact the users to see if they have a duplicate license.

I also can tell it's not the user when all of a sudden there are 5 or 10 duplicate licenses being used. This doesn't happen much but when it does it means there was an interruption on our network.

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

We have not had many duplicate licenses for a long time. I don't know why. It might be the upgrade of the FlexLM software. Maybe the network is better. Or a combination. It could also be something else. We still get the duplicate licenses if there are major network issues but we haven't had a bad issue like that in a while.

S

STEVEG

Author

21-Topaz I

One other thing we did was that PTC suggested to assign a static port to vendor daemon. This may have helped too.

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