SecureTransport license errors: their causes and prevention

SecureTransport uses two different licenses:

* Core Server license
* Features license

Both of these licenses contain a human-readable portion and an encrypted portion. Although the license is a textfile, it should not be edited (except to add or remove line terminators, as described below), since doing so will make the license unusable.

If you experience a license error, look at the Server Log for details.

In general, license errors fall into one of several major categories. If your error condition is not listed below, contact us for further assistance.

* License not found

The correct locations and names of the license files are:

* Core Server license: STHOME/conf/filedrive.license
* Features license: STHOME/conf/st.license

Verify that the license is in the correct location, and that its permissions are correct. (On Windows, make sure that it is not read-only.)

To install either type of license, open the Admin UI and go to Setup > Server License. Paste in the entire contents of the license file, and click Update License. Then stop and restart SecureTransport.

* License format invalid

First of all, make sure that the two types of license haven't gotten switched (check the actual files in the STHOME/conf directory).

Also, verify that you imported the entire license file's contents, not just the human-readable portion.

Make sure that the last line of the license file ends with an end-of-line character. (You can check this by opening it in vi or one of its clones; if it says "Incomplete last line," it's missing the end-of-line character.)

If you are running SecureTransport on Unix, verify that the license file does not contain ^M characters (carriage returns) at the ends of the lines. You can remove these using a text editor, or by running it through tr or something similar.

* License expired

In the Core Server license, the validity period is given in the "valid-from" and "valid-to" fields. A value of 0 in the "valid-to" field (for example, "valid-to Jan 1 0") means that it is a permanent license.

In the Features license, the expiration date is given multiple times, once for each enabled feature. A permanent license will have "Unlimited" in these fields instead. (Note that the line "This is a permanent license" does not necessarily mean that it never expires; if it contains expiration dates, those take precedence.)

If you get an error indicating that the license is expired, verify that you're still within the license's validity period. Also, make sure that your server's clock is set correctly.

* Hostname/IP address mismatch

In the Core Server license, the hostname or IP address for which it is valid is given in the "hostname" field. A value of * means that it will work anywhere; this is used only in temporary (evaluation) licenses.

In the Features license, the hostname IP address for which it is valid is given on the "IP Address" line. A value of 1.1.1.1/0 means that it will work anywhere; this is used only in temporary (evaluation) licenses.

Permanent licenses must be bound to the server's primary IP address, even if you have the SecureTransport services listening on a different interface. To find the primary IP address, follow these steps:

1. Get the server's primary hostname by running the following command:

hostname

On most platforms, this hostname comes from the /etc/hostname.interface file, where interface is the name of your primary network interface (such as hme0 or eth0). If the hostname command returns an incorrect hostname, check this file to make sure that it contains the correct name.

2. Depending on the platform you're using, run any of the following commands to get the corresponding IP address:

nslookup hostname
host hostname
dig hostname

Note: SecureTransport performs the hostname/IP address lookup against only the first location pointed to in your /etc/nsswitch.conf "hosts" setting. Thus, for example, if you have it set to "files dns," then you must have an entry in your /etc/hosts file (on Windows, this file is located at WINDIR\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) that maps the hostname to the primary IP address, even if this is already set on your DNS server. (It is recommended to set the "hosts" setting to "files dns," to avoid costly DNS lookups every time the server starts.)

* The number of active accounts exceeds the number of licensed accounts

The Core Server license has a field, "concurrent-users" (in the Admin UI it shows as "Accounts"), which limits the number of active user accounts you can have.

Active users are those that have logged in anytime during the last 60 days; the list of those accounts can be found via the Admin UI, under Accounts > Active Users. Note also that each transfer site within a user account is considered a user, so that if you have 5 user accounts and each one has 100 active transfer sites, then that counts as 500 active users.

If, upon a new login, that number will be exceeded, then this warning will be shown. In that case you may need to remove accounts, or contact your Axway sales rep to get a license that allows for more active accounts.