License wont work on second machine?

[Tommy L]

I have 2 workstations and 7 nodes on a network. Recently my second workstation lost the vray license. It still works as a node and as a slave for DR, so I cant understand why I cant use max w/ Vray locally on that machine?

[joconnell]

How many vray licenses do you own? If you've only got one vray license then you can only open the gui on one machine - is it possible that your first workstation is tying up the license so you can't open vray on the second? If you've got two vray licenses it seems odd, especially if it still sees a license to network render with. If the vray license server is running you can check how many licenses you have and how many are being used by typing in the IP of the computer the license server runs on (192.168.1.2 in my case) and then the port of the vray license server (30304) into a web browser. So in my case typing http://192.168.1.102:30304 will let me see all the details of my licenses. I've found that some machines don't always release a license after they've used it which could cause problems for you.

[Tommy L]

I only have one license.
Actually, it appears to be working. In the render panel the rollout that usually has the vray image on it has the edit license message, so I assumed it wasnt finding a license.

[joconnell]

Yep then that's it. If you're sharing a license between two computers they'll constantly be taking it from each other so if you accidentally leave the vray render dialog open or sometimes the material editor (I think) then it'll lock the license so your second computer can't get it. What you'll have to do is actually shut down the license server on your main machine and re-open it so that the first machine gets kicked off the license for the second machine to take it. It can sometimes seem like you can use two machines at the same time with one license but when it comes to rendering it'll lock to just the one!

[Daytona]

How many vray licenses do you own? If you've only got one vray license then you can only open the gui on one machine - is it possible that your first workstation is tying up the license so you can't open vray on the second? If you've got two vray licenses it seems odd, especially if it still sees a license to network render with. If the vray license server is running you can check how many licenses you have and how many are being used by typing in the IP of the computer the license server runs on (192.168.1.2 in my case) and then the port of the vray license server (30304) into a web browser. So in my case typing http://192.168.1.102:30304 will let me see all the details of my licenses. I've found that some machines don't always release a license after they've used it which could cause problems for you.

I was trying to set this up and when I checked the license server status I see that I have 1/1 free licenses, so no problems here, but ... on the second machine, where I don't have the dongle I get an error with the WibuKey. Not really sure how this works .. does the Wibu app require a separate license? It finds the dongle on the second machine when I scan the Wibu Control Panel.
I reinstalled Vray and nothing ....

edit: I get an error message about the Wibu license when I try to launch the vray license server on the second machine.

[joconnell]

Ah yes - you don't need to run the license server on the second machine. You only need to run this on the machine with the dongle plugged into it and then point all of your copies of vray towards that machines name or ip. The vray renderer has code built in to contact a license server at whatever ip you specify which allows you to have one main license server with lots of licenses sitting on it, or use the likes of hamachi to connect to it over the internet.

[Daytona]

Turned the vrlserver off and still doesn't work. Also do I need to install the WIBU app on the other machine without the dongle? Maybe that's the problem.

[joconnell]

Okay so your setup should be this:

Machine 1, has dongle attached and vray with the license server installed. Has the wibu drivers and the vrlserver service running. Lets say this machine's ip is 192.168.1.1 - when you install vray and it asks you for license settings at the end you type in 192.168.1.1 and that should be it.

Machine 2 has no dongle attached so doesn't need a copy of the license server or wibu key drivers. This machine is 192.168.1.2. again you install vray on this one but when the dialog appears at the end for where vray should look for it's license, you type in 192.168.1.1 - machine 2 is looking for a machine which has a dongle attached and is running a license server which will manage the vray licenses being checked in and out.

If you're having problems on machine 2, check to see if it's looking in the right place for a license - Go to chaos group > Vray adv > Licensing > Administration > Change V-Ray client license settings on your start menu on machine 2 and see what ip is being used in that dialog - it uses localhost by default which means it's going to look for a dongle plugged into itself and not another machine. Make sure machine 2 has the ip of whatever machine has a physical dongle plugged in and you should be okay.

[Daytona]

I had WIBU installed on the second machine and that was apparently causing problems.

Thanks for all the help.