Summary

Why are our licensing operations hanging after upgrading FlexNet Licensing Service?

Question

We're finding that older versions of our software that use FlexNet Publisher 11.11 begin to hang once trusted storage (TS) is updated to FNP 11.14. This was particularly severe with TS 11.14.0.0, but still occurs with 11.14.1.3. Sometimes, the problem appears to go away for a while, but then reoccurs.

Answer

The FlexNet Licensing Service (FNLS for TS) had a pre-FNP 11.14.1.3 bug related to an "orphan anchor" problem. The combination of client (anything prepped with libFNP.dll) and FNLS that is most likely to cause orphan anchor accumulation is FNLS in the range 11.14.1.0-11.14.1.2 with clients older than 11.14.0.0 (issue FNP-17347).

This problem is not seen once all clients are upgraded to 11.14.1.2+ (issue FNP-16737). 11.14.1.2+ clients will also transparently delete any existing orphan anchors. Orphan anchors will no longer accumulate once the FNLS is upgraded to 11.14.1.3 or later, but the FNLS does not delete existing orphan anchors, which is why using tsreset -anchors orphan may be necessary as a once-off operation on systems with clients older than 11.14.1.0.

Additional Information

The problem with providing the ability to delete orphan anchors with the FNLS installer is you have to prep the installer, making it publisher-specific, rather than common to all publishers. We have for a while considered providing better TS diagnostics tools; FNP-9761 remains an open enhancement request in our backlog (still under consideration, but has yet to be put on the roadmap for a future release).