Summary

Cannot start FNE ULLS Service in Windows

Question

Why does this error occur when running the command to start the ULLS service using flexnetls.bat -start?

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA\License Server\server>flexnetls.bat -start

The data area passed to a system call is too small.

Failed to start service

If you run the service from the command line it works fine:

14:10:17,363 INFO Starting FlexNet License Server 2015.03 (build 163104)
14:10:17,380 INFO Copyright (C) 2013-2015 Flexera Software LLC.
14:10:17,380 INFO All Rights Reserved.
14:10:17,381 INFO Running as a console session
14:10:32,940 INFO Updated license server instance J3ZJLKDQGTF9 is ready

Answer

This error is usually a result of mismatched Java installation vs ULLS binary.

• Please ensure that the 'bitness' (32 vs 64-bit) of the JRE and the ULLS are matching on the machine where you are running them.
• Check JAVA_HOME system environment variable and check whether it was 32-bit or 64-bit JRE. For example, it could be:
  

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_45 C> c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_45\bin\java.exe" -d64 -version
  Error: This Java instance does not support a 64-bit JVM.
  Please install the desired version.

• If these do not solve the problem, comment out the '@ECHO OFF' at the top of the flexnetls.bat script and run through it and collect the output. That may give you some clue as to which JAVA path is used. Ensure the ULLS kit you downloaded is matching with the JVM.

Additional Information

That error is consistent with a mixup of 32 and 64 bit kits. Both kits are actually identical, save for one difference: prunserv.exe, of which there are two variants (32-bit and 64-bit).

Most likely the problem is you've installed the service as a 64-bit service ? but it?s trying to use the 32-bit version of prunserv (or possibly vice versa). You can reproduce this by unpacking both kits, setting JAVA_HOME to the 64-bit location and if you try and use prunserv it fails with that error. If you then copy over prunserv from the 64-bit kit, all is well.

To clarify further, here's a brief explanation about how our Windows service is installed:

We make use of prunsrv.exe (http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-daemon/procrun.html):

Procrun is a set of applications that allow Windows users to wrap (mostly) Java applications (e.g. Tomcat) as a Windows service.

The service can be set to automatically start when the machine boots and will continue to run with no user logged onto the machine.

In our case, we use it to run the windows service and we also use it to communicate with that service: start it up, shut it down and so on. It comes in 32-bit and 64-bit variants, so we include the appropriate one in each kit.

So having run the batch file with the install option, if you take a look at the service, you'll see something like:
Path to executable:

C:\Users\MarkHolloway\Desktop\flexnetls-i86_windows-2015.03\server\prunsrv.exe //RS//FNLS-demo

That will be the command issued to run the service (RS= run service).

But here's the key: if that is a 32-bit version of prunsrv then it will require a 32-bit JVM to run. If instead you installed the same thing from a 64-bit kit it would require a 64-bit JVM to run.

So what you're actually seeing with the error 'The data area passed to a system call is too small. Failed to start service' is the service objecting.

So in this case, to resolve the matter you can either:

1. Copy the other version of prunsrv over your existing one (as I mentioned below) to make it match an installed JVM.
2. You can install the other flavour of JVM (32 or 64 bit).

The two things that made this matter confusing is:

1. That JAVA_HOME doesn't matter insofar as the service is concerned (it doesn't use that variable), although it is used by flexnetls.bat file.
2. 64-bit and 32-bit windows kits are probably better considered as the Windows kit for 64-bit JVMs and the Windows kit for 32-bit JVMs.