FLEXlm - Cannot find ethernet device

[B S_1]

Hi everybody,
we have a Problem with FLEXlm on HP-UX 11i
A-Class.

FLEXlm can't find the hostid (/dev/lan0)
The following command gives an error:

server:root:/opt/install: ./lmutil lmhostid -ether
lmutil - Copyright (c) 1989-2004 by Macrovision Corporation. All rights reserved
.
The FLEXnet Licensing host ID of this machine is ""
lmhostid: Cannot find ethernet device. (-29,175:2 "No such file or directory")

Do we need a Patch?
We already use the newest Version from the
Macrovision Web-Site.

Thank you in advance for any Help.
Regards
Dietmar

[Jaffar]

Hi dietmar

It seems that there was some Ip address /Host id changes happened .

By the way how the problem started.IS it a new Setup .

Any change has been done on the server .

Jaffar

[Stefan Pendl]

Dietmar,
I have had the same problem and solved it by including the following lines in the startup script:

#
# Ensure that all network interfaces are read- and writeable!
#
chmod a+rw /dev/lan[0-9]*
#

The problem is that on every startup the accessrights are reset for the divice files of the NICs.
The above will make sure to have access which you don't have now, this is because FLEXlm has to be run as non root user for security issues.

HTH,
Stefan

[rick jones]

If you tusc trace the FLEXlm stuff, I suspect you will find it opens /dev/lan0 and issues an ioctl rather than a sndmsg(). That is a mechanism using "LLA" or Link-Level Access. If indeed that is what the FLEXlm software is doing, it is time to tell a story...

Long ago, and far away, in fact when 10.20 was first shipped back in 1995 or 1996, HP announced that LLA was going away, to be replaced by DLPI. Examples of converting from LLA to DLPI were provided at docs.hp.com. It was announced that "new" drivers would not support LLA, only DLPI.

Well, a bit of time passes, and some new drivers appear, and 11.0 ships (1997) and lo and behold, there is still software that is using LLA and has not converted to DLPI. Sooo... on a very very few drivers (mostly workstation) retained enough LLA to tide the "oh, but we didn't have time to port" software over.

Well, time kept passing, and here we are in 1994, the better part of a decade after the first announcements were made, and in 11i, I believe it is the case that the last vestiges of LLA are gone. That means that device files like /dev/lan0 are also gone.

If Macrovision is still shipping software in 2004 that tries to use LLA, a rather direct and perhaps pointed service call should be made to their support organization.

Not that I have a strong opinion on the matter... :)

[A. Clay Stephenson]

While I agree that no one should still be using LLA rather than DLPI, there is a probable workaround. Do an lsdev | grep "maclan". If you have a maclan device loaded there is a script in /sbin/init.d called maclan_init that will create pseudo LLA device nodes for you.

[B S_1]

First thank you for your assistance, I agree with you, Macrovision should do there Homework. We need FLEXlm for Matra Styler passwords, so we have a big problem.
I wrote to the Macrovision Support with still no answer, i think they know why.

I tried out to chmod the lan device but it did not help.
Secondly I have tried to start maclan_init,
nothing happend.

lsdev gives:
server:root:/opt/install: lsdev|grep "maclan"
15 -1 maclan lan

I had a look at the script, it is looking for
btlan3 or lan2.

Any further Ideas?

Regards.
Dietmar

[rick jones]

the btlan3 and lan2 drivers are "legacy" drivers for core networking on workstations. Lan2 goes back ot the days of core 10 mbps. Btlan3 was the driver for the "core" 10/100 interfaces.

Before 11i, there were many different 10/100 drivers for the HP NICs based on the Digitial 2114X chipsets - btlan3 for "core 10/100," btlan4 for "add-on HSC 10/100," btlan5 for "add-on rj45 10/100," and btlan6 for "add-on rj45/AUI/BNC 10/100"

With 11i, all those drivers are merged into a single "btlan" driver, so you will not find a "btlan3" driver present on a system running 11i. I have no idea if the legacy workaround stuff remains in the merged btlan driver. It may very well have been finally pulled. However, you might get lucky so you might try seeing if you can change the "btlan3" to a "btlan" and get something that while likely not "supported" may work well enough until you can get the FLEXlm stuff fixed.

The "if you are really really stuck" way to go would be to write some shim library that intercepted calls to open, noticed which were for the old-style device of interest, and then intercepted the ioctls for the corresponding file descriptor. At that point, such software could then turn-around and make the apropriate DLPI calls to retrieve the MAC address. A "user space" version of what that maclan driver might do. You would have to LD_PRELOAD that where needed.

It would be better all around though to get the FLEXlm stuff fixed.

[B S_1]

Rick,
this is the solution, thank you.

I changed inside maclan_init to btlan and lan and
executed the script.
It changed the device /dev/lan0 from c 14 0x0.. to c 15 0x0...
FLEXlm can get the correct hostid!

I know that this is only a workaround and
i will try to talk to Macrovision :)

What do you think will we have problems with
the network performance.

Regards
Dietmar

[rick jones]

At the risk of being pedantic, maclan is not the solution, it is at best a workaround, at worst a kludge. The solution is to get FLEXlm up to the 1990's in terms of interfaces to use. I cannot imagine that it would be all that difficult for them because I suspect the calling sequence is almost identical to that of Solaris...

I am both glad and disapointed that changing the btlan3 to btlan worked. Glad because it gives you forward progress, disapointed because that gives the FLEXlm guys another opportunity to take a pass at what should have been done half a decade ago.

As far as performance goes, I don't think that the maclan stuff should have any noticable effect on performance.

I have no idea what the "supported" status of the maclan kludge happens to be on 11i. It may not actually be supported, which means it may cease to function at any time (perhaps the next patch, perhaps the next release, perhaps never...)

[Andre Stewart]

I just had the same issue on a 11i v1, C8000.  In my case, my DLPI driver is "iether".  I modified the maclan_init by adding "iether" to it's defalut of "btlan3" and "lan2". 

I now have my old FLEXlm license server for my ADA compiler running.