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I'm having a problem with my license; how do I fix it?

Amanda Gadrow
  • Updated

NOTE: The errors below do NOT apply to licenses in AWS Sagemaker or Marketplace. They only apply where you received a license key directly from Posit and have activated by key, in the form XYZW-XXXX-JKLM-XXXX-ABCD-XXXX-XYWZ

If you are activating with a license file, which is our preferred method, you can find common issues here: https://docs.posit.co/licensing/licensing-faq.html#license-file-error 

 

To troubleshoot license key activation issues, your quickest path to resolution depends on the nature of the problem.

`license-manager` command not found

If the `license-manager` command does not exist on your server, you may have inadvertently installed the open-source version of the product. Install the Professional version, and the `license-manager` utility will be installed along with it.

License needs to be renewed

If you have already received your new license file at renewal and want to apply it to your server, follow these links for instructions. 

Posit Workbench (RStudio Server Pro)
Posit Connect
Posit Package Manager
Shiny Server Pro

If you need to renew your license, please contact your Customer Success representative.

License needs to be moved to another server

To migrate a license from one host machine to another, follow these links for instructions.

Posit Workbench (RStudio Server Pro)
Posit Connect
Posit Package Manager
Shiny Server Pro

License is already in use

"This product key has been used on the max number of computers."

  1. Verify that your license has enough activations available for your needs; reach out to your Customer Success representative if not.
  2. Verify that you've deactivated the license on servers you are no longer using, to free up the activation for your new server. If you no longer have access to the old server, you can use this application to deactivate all activations on a given key. Note that this will deactivate ALL activations on the license key. If your key has more than one activation and you do not want to deactivate all of them at once, please contact Support so we can deactivate just the activation you need while leaving the others intact.
  3. If you are renewing, make sure you've run the `deactivate` command before you run the `activate` command on your server.

Special note for floating license servers: A floating license server only has one activation (either activated or not), so you can run the `deactivate` command or use the app (see #2 above) as described above and then run the `activate` command.  If you have multiple leases tied to a floating license, these will all become available again once the floating license server is re-activated. 

 

Unexpected expiration messages

If you are seeing unexpected expiration errors, there could have been a change to your host machine that invalidated the license. Posit licenses rely on a "fingerprint" comprising information about the host machine's hardware, operating system, network configuration, and system clock. If any of these components changes, the license will invalidate itself since it cannot prove that it is still on the machine it was originally installed on.

First, check whether the license should still be valid by running the `license-manager status` command appropriate to your server:

Posit Workbench (RStudio Server Pro)
Posit Connect
Posit Package Manager
Shiny Server Pro

If the output of the `status` command indicates that the license is expired:

  1. Check your records to verify that you have purchased or renewed your license, and that the license should still be valid. If it has expired legitimately, contact your Customer Success representative.
  2. For renewals, verify that you restarted the server after deactivating and reactivating the license to pick up the new expiration date.
  3. Verify that the system and hardware clocks on your host machine are synced; timedatectl or a similar utility can give you that information. If they are more than a second apart, we recommend syncing the hardware clock to the system clock with this command: hwclock -w  and then restarting the host machine.

If the output of the `status` command indicates that the license is valid, but you are seeing expiration messages in the interface, please try the following:

  1. Verify that the URL you are using in the browser to log into your server is pointing to the correct server. If you have a proxy or a DNS configured, are they forwarding to the correct host?

  2. Run these commands on the server
    sudo [server product] license-manager verify
    [server-product] license-manager verify #run without sudo

  3. If the output is different when you run the command with sudo and without, you will need to check the permissions of /var/lib/.local and /var/lib/.prof and make sure the server user can read/write to both of those directories, as well as their parents (/var and /var/lib).

  4. After you've changed the file permissions such that the server user can read and write to those directories, restart the server and run the `verify` command again without sudo to verify that the output matches the output of the command with sudo. 

Licensing operation failed

"Error offline activation: (1): Licensing operation failed."

  • Confirm that you are giving the full path to the .xml file with your activation command, e.g.
    rstudio-server license-manager activate-offline /full/file/path/response.xml
  • If it still fails, there may have a been a step missed in the offline activation/deactivation process or a problem with your .xml file.  Please contact Support for help in the diagnosis.

"Error validating product key: (1): Licensing operation failed."

  • Double-check that your key and activate command are complete and for the correct product. If the rstudio-server is in a non-standard location, you will need to use the full path in the command.  

"Error validating product key: (15): Insufficient system permission. Try again with sudo or as the root user"

  • If you are already using the sudo or root user, check for low memory levels on the server which could block the ability of the license-manager to write files as necessary. 

User licensing system unavailable for Posit Workbench

If you are trying to login to Posit Workbench and receive the following message in the UI:

"Error: The user licensing system is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

Check for low memory levels on the server.  If there is plenty of memory, please send a detailed message to the support team by starting a ticket at our support site including the server diagnostic and let us know if you are in a load-balanced configuration.

 

For all other issues, please send a detailed message to the Support team by starting a ticket at our support site, we'd be glad to help you resolve the problem.  Please send in the output of the `license-manager status` command for your product, for example:

sudo rstudio-server license-manager status

Connection Warnings

"Error verify: (19): The product is activated however the license manager is currently unable to connect to the license server to verify the activation."

"Error verify: (21): The connection to the server timed out because a long period of time elapsed since the last data was sent or received."

Check that the server has access to wyday.com port 443, as described here: https://docs.posit.co/networking/

You may need to open up your proxy or firewall to allow access.  If internet access is not allowed, you can switch to offline activation. 

 

 

 

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