Licensing Troubleshooting

Please make sure there are no Firewalls blocking access to Maxwell.exe and rlm.exe applications and that you are connected to the internet.

In some cases, connection errors could appear if the connection is set through a proxy.  In the license activator application you will find the option for administrating proxy settings.  If you have any questions about what to enter into the required fields, please contact your IT department.

This problem could also be temporary (our servers could be down for a short time for some reason), so maybe trying a bit later could solve the problem. If you try again and still are having the same problem, you can always activate the license manually from the Customer Gateway. It can be done from View Licenses > Download Maxwell Licenses > Maxwell Manual License Activation > Activation link

For this method you'll need the host ID of the computer where you are going to install the license. You can get it by opening Maxwell Render (gray icon) and going to Help menu > License Info... > A window will come up; in the first line it will show the hostID of the computer. With this method you'll get your activated license file downloaded. You then have to copy it in one of this folders depending on your operating system:

This can generally mean a few things:

• That the RLM License Server is not running. You can check if it's running by opening an internet browser window (on the computer where the RLM License Server is installed) and typing in the address: http://localhost:5054. If nothing appears then the RLM License Server is not running. Usually a reboot fixes this problem as the server is made to start-up with the computer.

• If this computer is trying to connect to a license server running on another computer on your network, please check that any Firewalls or routers are not blocking communications for Maxwell and rlm executables.

• You already had another RLM License Server running which is used by another application, and this server is already using port 5053. You can in this case change the port that Maxwell should use:
  • Locate the the maxwell_suite_floating.lic file in the computer that's running the RLM License Server and open it in a text editor. For the location of this file, please see the Licensing page.
  • Edit the first line of the license to change the 5053 port to something else, such as 5055. Save and close the .lic file.
  • In case you also have a maxwell_license.lic file in this folder, open and edit the port nr in this file as well.
  • Reboot your computer for the RLM License Server to pick up the changes.
  • Now Maxwell should connect to the server using this new port.
  • You need to open the maxwell_license.lic file on all the computers that are running Maxwell and also edit the port nr in these files.
    
    

Solution 1: On some systems, we have noticed it's necessary to restart the computer in order for the RLM License Server to run properly. Please reboot your system and start Maxwell again.

Solution 2: It might happen that the RLM License Server needs to reread the license files. In order to do so open a web browser and type http://localhost:5054 in the navigation bar, you will see something like this:

 Click to enlarge

If you see the message "NO ISV servers running"  as in the image above it means that there are not licenses running in the license server. Go to the left panel, press the third button "Reread/Restart Servers" and then, in the center frame, press the "REREAD/RESTART" button.

 Click to enlarge

Finally, press again "Status" in the left panel to check that there is a ISV server line with nextlimit as one of the active entries.

 Click to enlarge

Solution 3 [mainly on OSX]: After trying Solution 2 and still getting "NO ISV servers running" and checking the firewall is not blocking the communications (in OSX go to System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Firewall to disable it), then it could be a hostname conflict.

In order to figure out if this is the case, just go to a terminal and type:

hostname

And with whatever hostname you get, type:

ping <what hostName returned>

sudo scutil --set HostName <computer_Name>.local

PING myname.local (192.168.0.69): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.69: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.060 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.69: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.073 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.69: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.107 ms
...
(you should stop it with Ctrl+C)

Solution: This means the license activator does not have sufficient permissions to write the license file to disk. On Windows, please go to the Maxwell Render install folder (usually C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell 3), right-click the licenseactivator.exe application and choose "Run as Administrator". Then follow the licensing procedure as usual. In general, the license will need to be saved in:

Windows

C:/ProgramData/Next Limit/Maxwell/licenses

OSX

/Users/<username>/Maxwell (node locked and Learning license)
/Users/Shared/NextLimit/rlm_nl/licenses (floating license)

Linux

$HOME/Maxwell

 This means the "maxwell_license.lic" file contains a computer name or IP that is wrong. In this case, find this .lic file on your computer and change the single line in it, to correctly mention the computer name or IP of the computer that's running the RLM License Manager. If this is the same computer you're getting this error on, enter the computer name or IP of this computer.

For example, the line should say HOST 10.0.1.1 ANY 5053 (if 10.0.1.1 is the IP of the computer where RLM is running).

The location of this .lic file is:

• On Windows: C:\ProgramData\Next Limit\Maxwell\licenses
• On OSX: /Users/Shared/NextLimit/rlm_nl/licenses
• On Linux: $HOME/Maxwell

This could be due to a change in the local IPs of your LAN network, usually after rebooting your router. When you turn off and on your router, it assigns new DNS IP address numbers to all the computers in the LAN, so now the IPs are not the same as before.

In that case, simply find the new IP of the license server computer and repeat the license activation step (launch the License Activation pop up and choose the "Connect to the RLM License Server already running" option to enter the new server IP), OR directly find the maxwell_license.lic file that you will have in all your nodes, edit it with any text editor to update it with the new server IP and resave the license file.

The Host ID of a computer is an numerical and alphanumerical characters chain that identifies a computer and is needed during the licensing procedure (both on Floating and Node Locked licenses).

The licensing system normally takes it automatically, but in case any problem occurs and you need to manually find this identifier, there are two very easy ways of getting the Host ID from Maxwell Render (grey icon), licensed or not, its host ID appears displayed on the Maxwell Console panel, near the top, on the System Info section, as it is indicated in the screenshot below.

The host ID will also show if you go to Help menu > License Info... A window will pop up with your license info and in the first line it will show the host ID

Go to System preferences > Security to change the settings for running applications in your system, and allow Maxwell, or the RLM License Server in case you are installing the licensing server. After they have installed you can put the security settings to default.