A-Shell when used on PC networks or UNIX is licensed on a per-node basis. The number of simultaneous users allowed is dependent on the security key used to install A-Shell. This error will be displayed if a new node attempts to start an A-Shell session and all node licenses are already in use. Contact your dealer or MicroSabio to purchase additional licenses.

In some cases, node licenses can be used up by jobs that no longer exist, but which failed to exit gracefully. The first step in diagnosing this problem is to use SYSTAT to display the list of jobs logged into A-Shell. Under UNIX, SYSTAT will identify and flag "phantoms" and "zombies". (Phantoms are jobs that are logged into A-Shell but which no longer exist at the OS level. Zombies still exist at the OS level, but they are in a nether state between life and death, and need to be helped into the digital afterworld.) SYSTAT/K/Z will automatically remove them, freeing up the node licenses used by them.

Under Windows, it is more difficult to identify jobs which no longer exist. If you can't recognize them directly, one technique would be to use the JSTAT command. If the job is not responding, it will display [time out] on its status line while querying the job. JSTAT.LIT also reports what the job was last doing, whether it is executing any commands, keyboard operations, etc., all of which can help you identify jobs that are no longer running.

You can remotely abort a job that is stuck in some kind of an unresponsive state using the KILL command with the /K switch. If that doesn't work, or if it doesn't succeed in freeing all of the resources left by the job, you can use the QUTL command ("ZAP" option).

The ABOUT command will display information about the number of jobs in use and node licenses used up, which can help you evaluate if you are making any progress with the above techniques.

In small systems, or if all else fails, the simplest approach may be to just ask everyone to exit from A-Shell, and then manually erase the JOBTBL.SYS and QFLOCK.SYS files which are found in the same directory where the miame.ini file is (typically /vm/miame or C:\VM\MIAME). These files are automatically removed by the last user to exit (provided no one crashed without exiting properly), and they are automatically re-created as needed. Some sites insert an erase command for these files into the boot process for the server, so that you can be sure of having a clean job table after a hard reboot.