Upgrade to OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or greater causes Exelis VIS license to fail

THIS INFORMATION ONLY PERTAINS TO SOFTWARE VERSIONS IDL 8.5, ENVI 5.3 AND PRIOR

When upgrading a Macintosh system to the latest version available (10.8), this will cause the license manager in all Exelis VIS products to fail due to a change in the Host ID.  You may see the following errors:

% LICENSE MANAGER: Invalid host
The hostid of this system does not match the hostid
specified in the license file
Feature: idl
Filename: /Applications/Exelis/license/license.dat
License path: /Applications/Exelis/license/license.dat
FLEXnet error: -9,57. System Error: 2

or when attempting to start the license manager, you may see errors indicating an error in the Server ID in the Apple Console output:

(idl_lmgrd) SERVER line says 987654321987, hostid is 123456789123

This will require your license file to be rebuilt for the new Host ID that the system will see.

As long as the license is current on maintenance, rebuilding your license file via the Exelis VIS licensing portal should resolve the issue.  You can do this either by opening the license wizard application (found in /Applications/Exelis) and selecting "Activate a license using the internet" which should walk you through the re-hosting process; or by accessing the website manually and updating the Host ID. 

To find the new Host ID, open an X11 terminal window, and browse to /Applications/exelis/idl82/bin, then enter the following command:

./lmhostid

You can also determine the Host Name by using the command:

./lmhostid -hostname

Though this should remain the same across upgrading. 

Once the license file has been rebuilt, the errors should no longer persist.

If you are unsure if your maintenance contract has expired for your license, you can click here to contact your sales representative.

 

Review 6-7-2015 kk