Possible Issues With Floating Licenses

Applies to ReadyAPI 3.56, last modified on November 21, 2024
Important Notice for ReadyAPI Customers

ReadyAPI has moved to SmartBear License Management and from October 2023, file-based licensing will be retired. As of September 2023, all licenses issued for your subscription term will be ID-based licenses by default. If you are not currently on ID-based licensing, it's time to migrate immediately. File-based licensing will no longer be supported as of October 2023. This means that technical support requests related to file-based licensing will not be accommodated. If you encounter technical issues that you're unable to resolve, it could lead to service interruption. For customers still in the process of migration, we recommend reaching out to your Account Manager to discuss your migration plan. Alternatively, you can log a support request with our Customer Care Team for assistance.

For more details regarding licensing support, please refer to this link.

Below is a list of error messages that you might encounter when activating or deactivating floating licenses.

Common cause: The license server cannot allocate any free license to you. This can happen for a variety of reasons:

  • No floating license is installed on the server.

  • The license is not allocated to you.

Suggested solution:

  • Run Management Console and connect to your license server.

  • Select License Storage from the menu on the left and check if the required license is added to the license storage.

  • Allocate the license to the desired user or user group.

    Granting permissions to a user

    Click the image to enlarge it.

    For example, to make the license available to everyone, use the following user configuration:

    Granting permissions to all users

See also Configuring the License Server.

Common cause: The license server failed to allocate the license. Most likely, the number of concurrent users for the license has been reached.

Suggested solutions:

  • Ask another user running ReadyAPI to close the product, or wait until the license becomes available.

  • Your system administrator can also free the license from the server. To do this:

    1. Run the Management Console utility of the license server.

    2. Click Connect to view the connection details.

    3. Select License Sessions in the menu on the left.

    4. Select the user who is using the license and click . Enter the reason for which the license is revoked. The current user will receive a revocation notice and the license will be available to other users.

      Freeing the license from License Management Console

      Click the image to enlarge it.

Common cause: The license was issued for a different address or port.

Suggested solution:

  • Make sure your firewall does not block the connection to the license server at the ports your license is bound to.

  • Make sure the IP address of your license server matches the IP address to which the license is bound. If the license is bound to a specific TCP port, this port must be specified in the service configuration file. Otherwise, the license server will use port 1099.

    License location information

    Click the image to enlarge it.

Common cause: ReadyAPI cannot connect to the license server at the specified IP address or port. This can happen for a variety of reasons:

Reason Suggested solution
The license server uses a different port Verify that you specified the correct port in the License Manager.
Firewall blocks the required port Make sure your firewall does not block the connection to the license server at the ports your license is bound to. The default ports are: 1099, 10991, 9999, 9998.
The license server is not running Make sure the license server is running:
  • On Windows:

    1. Open Control Panel.

    2. Select System and Security > Administrative Tools.

    3. Open the Services utility.

    4. Make sure the status of the ProtectionLS service is Started.

    5. If it is not, right-click the service and select Start.

  • On Linux and MacOS:

    1. Open a terminal and set the working directory to the bin directory of the license server installation.

    2. Run the following command:

      ./ProtectionLS status

    3. The response should be The daemon is running. If it is not, run the following command:

      ./ProtectionLS start

The license was issued for a different port Make sure the port specified in the configuration file is correct.
  1. Open the server.xml file located in the bin directory of the license server installation.

  2. Verify that the specified port attribute of the server element is correct.

  3. If you modify the file, restart the service to apply the changes.

The hostName property is not specified explicitly Make sure the hostName specified in the configuration file is correct.
  1. Open the server.xml file located in the bin directory of the license server installation.

  2. Verify that the specified hostName attribute of the server element is correct.

  3. If you modify the file, restart the service to apply the changes.

Common cause: ReadyAPI cannot communicate with the license server to retrieve the license. Below are some possible reasons for this.

  • A different service is using the specified IP address and port.

  • The license server’s host name, port or IP address has changed.

Suggested solution:

  1. Check what service is listening for requests on the port you use to retrieve the license. You can use the netstat command to list all open ports and find the ports you use to connect to the license server. If necessary, free the port and use it for the license server.

  2. Check what process is listening on the ports that the ProtectionLS process should use (default ports: 1099, 10991, 9999, 9998). Use the netstat command-line tool. Stop the process and restart the ProtectionLS application to start listening on those ports.

Common cause: The installation file was changed due to network issues.

Suggested solution:

Try to download the installation file again. To make sure the downloaded file was not changed during transmission, you can use a checksum:

Installation file MD5
Windows x32 dbf71a55af7a5b89c9c17b9497b34a84
Windows x64 00054f8de62dd3e960b745d2b090ca8d
Linux 1a25e984ac61b5a06c6514175748f62a
MacOS 76b62ab54f64cb9406cd9678d243f043

In order to connect to the license server from an external network, you need to specify the name of the license server computer in the hostName setting in the server.xml file of the server. To learn how to do it, see Advanced Server Settings.

Common cause: The License Management Console cannot connect to the license server. This can happen for the following reasons:

Reason Suggested solution
The hostName property is not specified explicitly Make sure the hostName specified in the configuration file is correct.
  1. Open the server.xml file located in the bin directory of the license server installation.

  2. Verify that the specified hostName attribute of the server element is correct.

  3. If you modify the file, restart the service to apply the changes.

Contact support

If you cannot find the error message above, please contact SmartBear Support.

See Also

Floating License Activation
Check out Floating Licenses on Headless Machines
Possible Issues With Floating Licenses

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