2.52. "FAILURE: Unable to reach a network server."

If no clients can run, especially if they used to be able to run, the problem is likely to be on the server rather than the clients. Please follow the troubleshooting tips in this first section.

• Look at Server Manager's display to verify that a network license has been activated and is still current.

• Check the server firewall settings to ensure that the server lets Palisade.exe and lmgrd.exe both send and receive. See also Network Ports and Firewalls.

• Make sure that the license process is running on the server. If Server Manager says "Running", click the Status button and look for "Palisade UP" in the status display. If the status display does not contain "Palisade UP", the license process is not running. In that case, click the magnifying glass in lower left, and then the View button, and look at the last few lines of the display to see the failure reason. Most likely it s a port-number conflict.

• If you have other FLEXnet software licenses from other vendors running on the same server, verify that they are not using the same lmgrd ports as Palisade. The best way to do this is to leave them all unspecified. But if you specify any of the lmgrd ports, you must specify all of the lmgrd ports, and they must be unique.

  As for vendor daemon ports, we don't recommend that you specify any, but if you do then you don't need to specify all of them. For any vendor daemon ports that you do specify, stay away from ports that you specified for lmgrd or for any other software from Palisade or any other vendor, and stay away from the range 27000–27009 if lmgrd ports are unspecified.

• If you have manually edited your Server.lic file, you may have made a mistake. (We strongly recommend that you never edit this file directly. Instead, use Server Manager to set ports.) The SERVER line can have two or three fields: computer name of the server, Ethernet address, and lmgrd port number.

  • this_host is a valid wild-card for the first field, though Server Manager will change it to the actual computer name.
  • ANY is used in place of the second field when you have only activatable licenses. When you have certificate licenses, the actual Ethernet address appears in the second field and must not be changed, because that would break the digital signature of the file.
  • The third field will not appear if the lmgrd port number is set to Dynamic in Server Manager.

1. On the server, launch Server Manager. The first line of the display gives the server name. The communication port is given a line or two below that.

2. On the client, in License Manager, click Select License » Concurrent Network and it will show you the server name it is trying to reach and the port number it is trying to use.

The server name on the client should match the host name in Server Manager. (There are some unusual exceptions, where network administrators use fully qualified domain names or IP addresses on clients. These must be carefully tested.)

If the server specifies a port number, the client must be using that port. If the server port is dynamic, the client port must also be dynamic. If anything doesn't match, click Edit on the client screen and make the necessary changes. For more information, please see Redirecting Concurrent Clients to a New Server or Port Number.

Client software 7.5.2 or newer requires any server software release 7.5.2 or newer; client software 7.5.1 or older can run with any 7.x release of Palisade server software. For more, see "Do I need to install a new version of Server Manager?" in Install Server Software.

If a client is upgraded to 7.5.2 or newer but the server is still at 7.5.1 or older, install the latest server software on the license server. This will solve the problem for that client, and won't create a problem for any clients still at 7.5.1 or earlier.

Verify that the client can communicate with the server using the server name and port number specified in the System Registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FLEXlm License Manager\PALISADE_LICENSE_FILE or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WOW6432Node\FLEXlm License Manager\PALISADE_LICENSE_FILE.
If no port number is specified, all ports in the range 27000 through 27009 must be open.

You can test whether a given port is open by using PowerShell (v4 or newer) or Telnet:

• You need at least PowerShell v4 (Windows 8.1 or 10, or Windows Server 2012 R2 or newer) for this test. In PowerShell, type a command in the form

  test-netconnection servername -port 27000

  You will get a success or failure message.

• If you don't have the needed version of PowerShell, you can still use Telnet. Telnet requires a Telnet client on the client computer and a Telnet server on the server. These are part of Windows, but by default they're disabled in recent versions of Windows. If they're not enabled, you can enable them in Windows Control Panel » Programs and Features » Turn Windows features on or off.) The command format is

  telnet myservname 27000

  You should get a blank screen if the port is open. If it's not, you should get an error message within about 60 seconds.

The licensing software uses a second port, called the vendor daemon port. Problems with this port, in the absence of problems with the LMGRD port, are extremely rare but when other issues have been eliminated you should check for them.

1. On the server, launch Server Manager. Click the magnifying-glass icon at lower left, then the View button. A Notepad window will open. Scroll down near the bottom to find the "Palisade using tcp-port". (Ctrl+F is the search command in Notepad.)

2. On the client, repeat the above Telnet or PowerShell test but specify the "Palisade using tcp-port" number. If you're checking firewall logs, be aware that the client typically uses a different port to communicate with this server's vendor daemon port. Unlike the LMGRD port, the vendor daemon port is not specified anywhere in the System Registry or elsewhere on the client.

If you have an issue with this port, you will need to adjust your firewall settings; see server firewall information in Network Ports and Firewalls.

If so, you might need to use a fully qualified domain name, portnumber@servername.company.com rather than just portnumber@servername. You can set this in the System Registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FLEXlm License Manager\PALISADE_LICENSE_FILE or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WOW6432Node\FLEXlm License Manager\PALISADE_LICENSE_FILE.
(If you anticipate this problem, and you haven't yet installed the client software, edit the server name in the Palisade_NetworkClient.ini file before installing the client software.)

Additional keywords: Subdomain

The client computer's firewall should allow PalFlexServer6.exe or PalFlexServer7.exe to send and receive. See client firewall information in Network Ports and Firewalls.

Most clients are fine with the default FLEXnet timeout of 0.1 second, but some have a problem because they need to make too many Internet "hops" to reach your server. If you've eliminated client configuration issues, you may have a timeout problem. Please see FLEXlm License Manager Times Out for more on this possibility.