Nuke license servers vs. license files

anon28194136 · November 14, 2013, 3:17am

Hey!

We have declared an environment for 2 license servers, 1 primary and 1 failover for Nuke. Tonight we maxed out our license count using the limit as a counter, but I am still seeing errors about licenses. After viewing the log, I noticed that Deadline appears to be unable to find a license on the server(s), so it then starts to look for license files saved locally on the machine (something that wasn’t declared in the job environment). This is a problem for us, because we have some outdated/bad license files all over the place and it would be great to have an option for strict license declaration, meaning don’t look for local license files unless we say so.

Here is our declaration for the job:
FOUNDRY_LICENSE_FILE
27000@ourlicenseserver.com ;27000@ourotherlicenseserver.com

Maybe there’s something else going on that I have missed, but I have found this in our logs…

2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FOUNDRY LICENSE ERROR REPORT
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: ----------------------------
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: Timestamp: Wed Nov 13 18:35:43 2013
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: License(s) Requested:
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: nuke 2013.0607 render only with options all
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: Extended Info: None Provided
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FLEXlm Environment Info: 27000@ourlicenseserver.com ;27000@ourotherlicenseserver.com
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: Reason for failure:
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FLEXlm : License request failed.
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: RLM : A suitable license does not exist.
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: LICENSE DIAGNOSTICS
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: ---------------------------
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FLEXlm :
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: Licensed number of users already reached.
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: Feature: nuke_r
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: License path: 27000@ourlicenseserver.com;27000@ourotherlicenseserver
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: .com;C:\Program Files\The Foundry\FLEXlm*.lic;C:\ProgramData\The -
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: Foundry\FLEXlm*.lic;C:\Program Files (x86)\The Foundry\FLEXlm
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FLEXnet Licensing error:-4,132
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: For further information, refer to the FLEXnet Licensing End User Guide,
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: available at “www.macrovision.com”.
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: RLM :
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: No license for product (-1)
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: License Path:
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: C:\ProgramData\The Foundry\RLM
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FOUNDRY LICENSE DIAGNOSTICS
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: ---------------------------
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: STDOUT: FLEXlm : Error : Maximum user counted exceeded.
2013-11-13 18:35:44: 0: INFO: Process exit code: 100
2013-11-13 18:35:45: 0: An exception occurred: Error in RenderTasks: Error in CheckExitCode: Renderer returned non-zero error code, 100. Check the log for more information.

rrussell · November 15, 2013, 3:23pm

I’m pretty sure this is just standard FLEX behavior, and not specific to anything that Deadline is doing. For example, if I launch Nuke here if our license server is down, FLEX will just fallback to some default local license file paths. In fact, I’m seeing the same local paths that you’re seeing in the log.

MikeOwen · November 15, 2013, 4:24pm

I would just add to Ryan’s comment that all Flexlm licensed products work in this order (assuming they are all present. If not, skip to the next step)

Vendor based license file variable (FOUNDRY_LICENSE_FILE sys env variable in this case)
Under Windows it is possible, but not necessary, to store a license file location in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FLEXlm License Manager\FOUNDRY_LICENSE_FILE. If this registry entry exists, the location it holds is searched after any locations specified in the FOUNDRY_LICENSE_FILE environment variable and before any locations specified in LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable.
LM_LICENSE_FILE - look for a generic global env variable if one is present
Fallback to the application specific local declared license path - this is controlled by The Foundry, within their application.

As the Foundry is slowly moving all it’s older clients from Flexlm over to their newer RLM license system, maybe have a chat with them as there might be other options for you when using RLM?

anon28194136 · November 15, 2013, 10:03pm

Thanks guys. You are right. I still don’t know how, but somewhere there were Nuke licenses being checked out that weren’t being counted by Deadline (old jobs that don’t go through Deadline yet). This caused our license server to reply that there were no licenses left, even though the limit was set correctly. That is what kicked these errors off to begin with. The problem was on our end, and nothing to do with Deadline. Thanks for the replies!