Standalone keeps stealing web license, not using Dongle

[sbstnc]

Hi,
I've been getting nowhere with this issue so hoping some other customer might help. Support don't seem to understand the problem.

I have a dongle on a slave machine. Reason is that if slave crashes out (out of memory, some other error) then often the slave will often unauthenticate. Was a massive problem during batch renders if, during the night, it stopped or lost authentication.
If daemon reopens it will sit there asking for login and password, and unless I visually check the slave machine there is no way to tell it's fallen off.

So, dongle is supposed to stop this, since removal of "offline licensing" (one of the worst decisions and a big cause of trouble for me).

Problem is when, occasionally, I open C4D on that machine, Standalone will take a web license. I suspect this is because plugin is taking a web license (I need my plugin licenses to float, not on the dongle).
As the dongle is in the slave, but the slave has taken a web license instead, that leaves a license trapped inside the dongle doing nothing and unable to be accessed. I need the web license to be available to other machines, not to be used on machine that already has a license in a dongle.

What can we do here to solve this? This is not expected behaviour. Licenses are separate - one for plugin, one for standalone. While both are needed to render from C4D, standalone should activate from the dongle as it's available. C4D should take web. To me this is logical and what I would expect. But it doesn't seem to be working this way.

Tried logging out of all licenses on all machines, checking license status, then activating the dongle. Dongle is up to date.
Need a solution please.

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
I think that you need to temporarily remove the dongle, before occasionally opening a plugin on the Slave machine, or have another c4d license in the dongle to use in that case.
ciao Beppe

[sbstnc]

Hi,
I think that you need to temporarily remove the dongle, before occasionally opening a plugin on the Slave machine, or have another c4d license in the dongle to use in that case.
ciao Beppe

Yes, did that, it didn't work.

I've had confirmation from support that if the C4D license uses web, then standalone will also use web. Can't mix web and offline. It took about 15 emails to get to that point though.
I'm just going to say it - this is stupid.

There are two separate licenses. We need standalone to be able to use C4D plugin, OK. But why the standalone can't be permanently licensed with the dongle, or have 10 standalones licensed with dongle and 5 floating C4D (for slaves but floating C4D depending on artists) , is not considering the business use of these apps. I want slaves to never lose license and not have to authorise the daemon all the time. But I want floating C4D licenses so we have freedom of allocation of resources.

It seems completely logical that if I own a standalone lic and I have that on a dongle, that I expect it to use the dongle as first priority. Otherwise if it takes a web license, then the dongle (with it's license trapped inside) is not being used and that machine now has 2 licenses - one trapped in the dongle not used, and one taken from web. This is... there's no way to say it nicely, this is a massive oversight. Why can't they licensed one offline and one offline? Can they be revised in next version to do this please?

Thanks
S

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
because you cannot devide a couple. Plugin license always needs a Standalone license, but you want to mess up the thing using another Standalone license already assigned to the dongle, without corresponding plugin license.
That’s simply not possible.
If you want to use the Slave machine also as production machine, you just need to purchase another plugin license to pair with the Standalone license in the dongle, and been able to work with both machines at the same time.
Alternatively, you can use remotely your licenses on the Master machine, from the Slave machine via TeamViewer or similar solutions.
ciao Beppe

[sbstnc]

Hi,
because you cannot devide a couple. Plugin license always needs a Standalone license, but you want to mess up the thing using another Standalone license already assigned to the dongle, without corresponding plugin license.
That’s simply not possible.
If you want to use the Slave machine also as production machine, you just need to purchase another plugin license to pair with the Standalone license in the dongle, and been able to work with both machines at the same time.
Alternatively, you can use remotely your licenses on the Master machine, from the Slave machine via TeamViewer or similar solutions.
ciao Beppe

But this makes no sense and is not explained at time of purchase or any other time. Why does it have to be a couple? Plugin communicates with standalone in the background, license them however you please.
It's not logical and it's not expected behaviour is what I am saying. You make us buy two licenses but now I find out they have to be tied together?

Then we need to change back from dongle to regular license, and now we have another battle on our hands, as OTOY says "no, licenses can't be changed back". Why not? Sure they can. Cancel the dongle then and issue me with a regular. I didn't even want the dongle, but the slaves keep unregistering themselves on crash or other issues, because OTOY removed offline licensing - and there isn't a single customer who is happy about that.

[senorpablo]

Sbstnc is making a legitimate and clear point about the licensing being broken and impractical in a real world production environment.

[sbstnc]

This is seconded by senorpablo, can this be implemented for future versions? Current license dongle arrangement doesn't make logical sense.
As such I will take you guys up on the offer of returning the dongle I have.
Thanks
S

[mojave]

Thank you all for your feedback.

I see that you have a dongle with a standalone license.

The behavior you see is due to that when the plugin starts it should be activated, in order to do so it would try first to fetch the required plugin+standalone combo from the dongle, because just standalone is found it will try to get it online, where there's an available one.

Currently you cannot activate combining licenses from a dongle and online at the same time but you may update your dongle with the required plugin license to get the behavior you expect, this license will be node-locked but you will still be able to use the rest online.

Offline licenses usually cannot be brought back online, if you need to do so please let support know and if there's something that can be done in that respect they will help you.

[sbstnc]

Thank you all for your feedback.

I see that you have a dongle with a standalone license.

The behavior you see is due to that when the plugin starts it should be activated, in order to do so it would try first to fetch the required plugin+standalone combo from the dongle, because just standalone is found it will try to get it online, where there's an available one.

Currently you cannot activate combining licenses from a dongle and online at the same time but you may update your dongle with the required plugin license to get the behavior you expect, this license will be node-locked but you will still be able to use the rest online.

Offline licenses usually cannot be brought back online, if you need to do so please let support know and if there's something that can be done in that respect they will help you.

Yes sure but this is the problem we need fixed, and what you've written describes the programmed functionality but not what is logically expected by the user. WHY do they have to be linked and activated in the same method? One is the engine in the background, the other is the plugin. As you can buy licenses separately it makes sense for us to assume they are also activated separately.

We don't want to tie a plugin license to the dongle, you guys consistently don't seem to understand this. We want machines that can be used as slaves, and not worry about crashing or windows restarts un-authenticating the daemon, as happens a lot. But if we need to sit an artist on that machine, we don't want that machine having a license trapped in a dongle doing nothing while that same machine takes a web license. This is a valid use-case where we would have render machines but artist capacity goes up and down.

More than that, there doesn't seem to be a good reason why the pair have to activate in the same method other than "we already made it this way". We understand you made it that way, we are asking, can you change this? Because current functionality does not consider studio use cases and is very limited.

Thanks
S

[mojave]

We do understand this is a reasonable use case and that this can be an issue so do not hesitate your request will be assessed and taken seriously into account.

Apart from this use case, you mention that others are not supported. Would you be able to give us more details to make sure we have all covered when we get the chance to look int this?