IMPORTANT: Recuring Outage due to "lost" licence

[Great Office - Hummig KG]

Since Upgrading to 3.3 we experience repeatedly a full system outage due to missing licence. We can see the licence code and it is correct. But above the licence code we read:

 

Current license state: No licence

License duration: Permanent

 

All we need to do, is just restarting the service, than the licence is coming out. This works for app. 3 to 48 h.

 

What's the best practise to localize the problem?

 

- The history is full of non-relevant events and messages: Which Level is appropriate?

- It seems that the system misses the licence from one second to another.

- It seems to have no bearing with a 3-minute-limit or similar.

- We have an Dongle-based NFR-Licence with Upgrade Protection Jan 2010

 

Maybe a defective Dongle could cause this problem? When the sytem "hangs" again, we only see there is "no licence". No idea to check if the dongle is "active". Any tool to do this?

 

Regards

[Vodia PBX]

Since Upgrading to 3.3 we experience repeatedly a full system outage due to missing licence. We can see the licence code and it is correct. But above the licence code we read:

 

Current license state: No licence

License duration: Permanent

 

All we need to do, is just restarting the service, than the licence is coming out. This works for app. 3 to 48 h.

 

What's the best practise to localize the problem?

 

- The history is full of non-relevant events and messages: Which Level is appropriate?

- It seems that the system misses the licence from one second to another.

- It seems to have no bearing with a 3-minute-limit or similar.

- We have an Dongle-based NFR-Licence with Upgrade Protection Jan 2010

 

Maybe a defective Dongle could cause this problem? When the sytem "hangs" again, we only see there is "no licence". No idea to check if the dongle is "active". Any tool to do this?

 

There was a report about instable USB, which was even causing jitter every couple of seconds. A defective dongle, I doubt that. I believe that the regular polling of the dongle causes the driver to go crazy. We slowed the polling down significantly, but it seems the problem is still there.

 

What OS is that?

 

If the problem persists, ask for a MAC-based key instead (even if it expires after some time). That should help you to stabilize it until the root has been found.

[Great Office - Hummig KG]

...What OS is that?

Win 2003 R2 SP 2

[Great Office - Hummig KG]

*** NEW DETAILS ON THIS PROBLEM-REPORT ***

 

In the History we found this entry:

 

[0] 2009/04/22 23:46:58: License suspended: There are too many extensions

[0] 2009/04/22 23:47:01: Cannot send packet: No license

 

We definitely didn't made any changes on the Extensions. After restarting the service, the licence informations are shown as follows:

 

Extensions: 10/10 Accounts: 107/300

 

As a workaround we've deleted the PAC-Console-Extension (so we have only 9 Extensions of 10 used) and hope the error won't appear any more. But obviously there is a bug counting the number of extensions. Again, without deleting the 10th Extension the PBX will work some time...

 

Any idea?

[Vodia PBX]

Interesting... There were cases when the counter was "on the edge" where the PBX made trouble. I thought those cases were fixed; seems like we have to put this on the bug radar again.

[Great Office - Hummig KG]

Interesting... There were cases when the counter was "on the edge" where the PBX made trouble. I thought those cases were fixed; seems like we have to put this on the bug radar again.

After some weeks of operation, we can confirm, that the described problem never recured since decreasing the number of extensions to 9 (and keeping 1 extension unused). Hope we can use all extensions of licence in V4.

[Alex Kasperavicius]

On a related note, how come the default behavior is to brutally shutdown the entire system when a license goes over? Wouldn't it make sense to allow only X extensions to work with a log message? Or better yet, a warning message emailed to the administrator with some chance to fix it? Why so harsh?

 

Consider: if a hacker were to crack PBXnSIP, they would get rid of the license module completely - this only inconveniences your paying customers.

 

AK

[Vodia PBX]

On a related note, how come the default behavior is to brutally shutdown the entire system when a license goes over? Wouldn't it make sense to allow only X extensions to work with a log message? Or better yet, a warning message emailed to the administrator with some chance to fix it? Why so harsh?

 

Consider: if a hacker were to crack PBXnSIP, they would get rid of the license module completely - this only inconveniences your paying customers.

 

Using the software without a license is illegal. Of course it is easy to crack the license. But if a VAR installs the software for a customer and the customer later finds out the VAR sold him a crack version, that VAR is in trouble.

 

Especially the case with the USB license key concerns me. If the USB stick gets lost, it is a big problem for the one who is running the service. I have no problem giving them lets say a week to fix it. But how would you notice the admin? If he logs into the web interface, a huge warning is no problem. But what if not? Sending out emails? What if he does not set up email or does not read it?

 

MAC addresses do not just disappear. This case is not critical.

[Alex Kasperavicius]

I know it's illegal, but 14 year olds with something to prove don't care!

 

Anyway, if an admin is silly enough not to set up email notifications then he deserves what he gets - but hearing that pbxnsip will shutdown immediately when it sees a license violation is a big problem. If you gave us a week, that is plenty of time to fix a problem like that.

 

If I were an admin and got a warning there was a license violation and the system would be shutting down in 168 hours - and one every hour after that - I would be ON THE BALL to get that puppy fixed!

 

Hey, you could also ring the phone of the admin really annoyingly or send him a voicemail too!

 

You know, just creating a log level that sends urgent warnings like that could be helpful for other things too - then all you have to do is flag it if a license violation occurs. Think we can put it in?

 

AK

[Vodia PBX]

Anyway, if an admin is silly enough not to set up email notifications then he deserves what he gets - but hearing that pbxnsip will shutdown immediately when it sees a license violation is a big problem. If you gave us a week, that is plenty of time to fix a problem like that.

 

If I were an admin and got a warning there was a license violation and the system would be shutting down in 168 hours - and one every hour after that - I would be ON THE BALL to get that puppy fixed!

 

Hey, you could also ring the phone of the admin really annoyingly or send him a voicemail too!

 

You know, just creating a log level that sends urgent warnings like that could be helpful for other things too - then all you have to do is flag it if a license violation occurs. Think we can put it in?

 

When will a license become invalid? Generally speaking, licenses are not time limited. So either they work or they don't in this case we don't have to worry.

 

There are a couple of exceptions:

 

1. The MAC address changes. IMHO not our problem. If someone changes the MAC than that's his problem.
   
2. The license key is time limited. For this we send a email notification out and when someone logs into the web interface there is also a warning. IMHO also reasonable.
   
3. Someone removes the USB stick. Here we have a serious problem. Because that will really shut down the PBX license with immediate effect. IMHO it is also okay to ask that the USB key must not be removed while the PBX is in operation.
   

Any other exceptions that we need to deal with?

 

Everything else like USB driver goes belly up should be fixed at the root of the problem.