Summary

Do you need to separately resolve clock-windback once you've corrected a client system clock?

Question

If a client system activates a capability request and then realizes their system clock isn't correct, after they fix the system clock, the clock-windback detection gives an error. The question is:

• Do they need to reload the license from the server with the new client time settings to avoid this error?
• Or is windback detection evaluated each time a client attempts to acquire a license?
• And if the former (which could mean that there is a flag set in the anchor file), what is the process on FlexNet Embedded to fix a clock-windback flag?

Answer

Consider the following:

• If you set the clock back and then restore the correct time, then the windback error should clear itself.
• If you set the clock forward, perform a licensing operation, and then restore the correct time, the error persists until the real time catches up with the time of the last licensing operation performed while the clock was wrong.

The way to clear up this error is by applying a new capability response, which resets the clock windback anchor even if it is set in the future.

In general, it is not recommended to move the clock backward to extend the expiration time. Setting the clock forward might let someone to access the license before its start date, but does not extend the length of license availability.

Additional Information

Clock windback detection will be triggered if the system time appears to have been set to an earlier date than has been recorded by the licensing infrastructure (see the FlexNet Embedded documentation). Setting the system time back to the correct time should allow the licensing system to continue functioning.

Having set the time forward and used licensing such that it updates the windback time, the predicament is that there is no easy way to reset the windback time to the present. To accomplish this, a new capability response should be created which, when processed, will reset the windback time to the time of the capability response.