OpenVMS Licenses Expired

[Paul Goslin Rae McCarth]

ALL of our OVMS licenses expired over the weekend?? (3 Alphas & a Vax). I thought I had them licensed until next year via DSPP downloads of new script files. any way, which ones do I need to enter manually to allow me to FTP the script file to it with the rest of the licenses/ renewels so I can run it ???
I tried manually entering some DExNETxxx licenses and they seemed to take OK... but when I attempted to enter one for OPENVMS-ALPHA-USER , it rejected and would not validate the checksum...

[Dean McGorrill]

Hi Paul,
probably something like ucx , or tcpip
* would get ftp running so you can get the
others. I'm not sure of the license pak names.

[Paul Goslin Rae McCarth]

The PAK names are exactly what I need, I have printed out the license script from the DSPP download, and it's 34 pages long... lots of PAKS, I'll see if I can find the TCPIP pak...

[Robert Gezelter]

Paul/Rae,

You will need the UCX/TCP paks and the base OpenVMS pak.

Be careful of the o/O problem.

What I have often done when this happens at a site is to use C-Kermit to due the file transfer (If I have been luck enough to either have installed it previously or have it on a usable media).

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Paul Goslin Rae McCarth]

I found and entered the license for UCX (which inludes FTP), but I'm unable to start the FTP service because it says the network device is not up ???
Which PAK enables the network device ?

[Ian Miller.]

have you entered the base VMS licence?

[Hoff]

OpenVMS Tips: Registering Core License PAKs: http://64.223.189.234/node/259

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs.com

[Robert Gezelter]

Paul/Rae,

Have you tried shutting down and restarting TCPIP?

While I have not been in this situation recently, my recollection is that the startup fails, in which case your network is not actually up. Do a SHUTDOWN STARTUP sequence manually (a reboot is quite possibly unneeded).

My apologies for posting an untested suggestion, but I am not in the office at the moment and cannot easily test my recollection.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Paul Goslin Rae McCarth]

Thank You for the suggestions... Support finally called me back, after I had already manually entered the licenses for DVNETEND, DVNETEXT, OPENVMS-ALPHA and UCX. They had me also register OPENVMS-ALPHA-USER and then reboot. After that, I was able to ftp a license script file over I got from DSPP site, and then telnet in and execute it. One more reboot and everything looks good now. All we can figure is the old licenses were never deleteded, just disabled, and maybe the license DB was full ?? Were back now...
Support ran me around initially sending me to our sales rep ?? go figure...

[Paul Goslin Rae McCarth]

Enabled needed licenses, rebooted, transfered license script file to server and executed it, then rebooted one more time....

[John Gillings]

>and then reboot.
>then rebooted one more time....

Sacrilege! For future refernce it is NEVER necessary to reboot a system to fix any licensing problem.

The main stumbling blocks to license issues are:

1) Not realising there are VOLATILE and PERMANENT data bases. REGISTER places the new PAK in the PERMANENT data base, but you need to LOAD it into the VOLATILE data base for it to work. LOADed PAKs remain in the VOLATILE data base until explicitly UNLOADed.

2) Not realising that all active PAKs in the PERMANENT data base for the same product combine, and, an expired PAK combined with an unexpired PAK results in an expired PAK.

I suspect you may have hit both of these.

To replace expired PAKs, LICENSE DELETE or LICENSE DISABLE all the expired ones, LICENSE REGISTER the new ones and then LICENSE LOAD (or if you're on a very old version, LICENSE UNLOAD then LICENSE LOAD) to refresh the VOLATILE data base.

Another source of confusion is the LICENSE LOAD command reverses the usual DCL convention for reporting conditions. By default LICENSE LOAD issues a message when a PAK is successfully LOADed, but does NOT issue a message if the load failed.

When you're running on expiring PAKs, it's a good idea to issue a SHOW LICENSE command every so often to get advance warning of impending expirations. By default it will warn you of any terminations due in the next 30 days (see HELP SHOW LICENSE/WARNING_INTERVAL).