Troubleshooting Licensing Issues
Reviewed July 2020
The A-Shell license program and process has been in place for many years, and has never been shown to have a problem or to produce invalid results. If you having a problem, it is likely because either you or the person who provided the license has overlooked something. Here are some suggestions for finding the problem.
Confirm your license
If you are having trouble with any aspect of A-Shell (including ATE) licensing, the first thing to do it to make sure that your license is and says what you think it is. Use the following steps to check for discrepancies, oddities, unexpected results, etc.
| • | Run ABOUT from the prompt. |
| • | If you are using A-Shell/Windows or ATE, check the Help...About box for confirming info. |
| • | Run SYSACT from the prompt. |
| • | Run LICENS from the prompt while not logged in to OPR: |
A-Shell Version 6.2.1425
In February 2016, the A-Shell license key format was changed to xxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx (seven characters, two sets of six characters, seven characters). If you are trying to use a key of that format in a version of A-Shell before 6.2.1425, that's the problem; it won't work. Please request another key in the "old" format. The format of the old key, by the way, in characters, is 4-4-3-6-8. Note also that the old style key was all lower case letters, whereas the new style is all capitals.
ATE Issues
Run ABOUT from the prompt; it will show the license options for the ATE aux license independently of the main server license. In addition, next to "ATE Licensing:" it will list "Client", "Auxiliary (aux.lic)", AND/OR "Server". If it lists "Client" in addition to one of the other two, that means that the ATE client supplied its own license, even though the server could have done so. (This could be the reason for the confusion between the features included in the server-based license and those in the client-based license.) Also note that in this case, the information displayed will be relative to the aux license, even though that won't necessarily be what the client is actually using. To check what the client is actually using for licensing, see Help > About on the ATE menu bar.
If you are using A-Shell/Windows or ATE, check the Help...About box for confirming info. In the case of ATE, near the bottom, after "Additional license information:", it will indicate "(Server supplied)" if the license info came from the server. If it doesn't say that, then the information will be relative to the license which is local to the ATE client.
