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Dual boot - Indie license


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Hi,

I've recently installed CentOS 7 on my 2nd SSD, so that I now dual boot Win 10 and CentOS 7.
However, is there any way of utilizing my Indie license currently registered on my Windows partition?

This should be possible, but SESI won't provide any information on this, as "it is not designed in that way".

So if there's any geniuses who knows how to tackle this, I'd be happy to know!

Cheers!

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I assume you read Atom's reply? But you'd prefer to keep the same license working with both Windows and Linux. Exactly what I plan to do. I seem to recall at least one person claiming this was possible, not sure if it was here on odforce or elsewhere. If you DO manage this, PLEASE post the solution here for the benefit of the community.

 

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I presume that provided your hostid does remain the same between both OSes, you could install the license to one, and then manually enter the same keys to the other without using the online service.  Or just manually check-out the license on license.sidefx.com and manually install it to both.

I'm not sure exactly how the hostid is derived, but most of these kind of license managers derive it from the MAC address of your primary network adapter, which could very well mean it remains the same on a dual-boot system.

Alas, I've not tried it, so I can't confirm anything.

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I can say one thing, it's not allowed - I actually checked this with Jenny at SESI just 2 weeks ago, having built my new workstation, my idea was to primarily run Linux and have a dual boot with Windows for some stuff - but due to this I had to skip Linux - for now. I'm buying an additional Indie license soon anyway , so I can solve it with 2 licenses...

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Well it would be great to get some clarification on this. My understanding, based on feedback from SESI as well, is that it's not officially supported. So that if something goes wrong with the licensing, SESI won't provide support.

Whether or not 'not officially support = not allowed ' is something that hopefully someone from SESI can clarify.

It's still only 1 license per machine and only 1 copy of that license running at any given time.  I also own full (perpetual) lienses of both MODO and Unity, each of which have a more permissive licensing policy. ie installing on a 2nd machine but only running one copy at a time.

I plan on upgrading to a full license of Houdini in the coming year.

Getting a 2nd Indie license isn't a big deal, but a 2nd full license is another matter.

Edited by eco_bach
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I might have been mistaken - Jenny did not expressly state it wasn't allowed, se phrased it like this...

Quote

> > Your Houdini-Indie license is for 1 machine, it will not work on 2
> > machines at the same time. You are permitted to move the license to a
> > different machine 3x per year. Also, the Houdini-Indie license is a
> > node-locked/workstation license. It can only be used on the machine it is
> > installed upon. It can not be accessed over a network from a remote
> machine.
> >
> > Houdini licenses see a dual-boot machine as 2 machines, and your
> > Houdini-Indie license will only work on 1 boot.
> >
> > If you need to use Houdini on both machines I suggest that you install
> the
> > free Houdini-Apprentice on the secondary machine. You can use our online
> > conversion tool to convert the Apprentice (.hipnc) files back to Indie
> > (.hiplc) format.

So yeah, it might be a purely technical issue - sorry, I had interpreted that erroneously. :P

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Quote

> > Houdini licenses see a dual-boot machine as 2 machines

This is the bit that I wonder at... I think it might be more accurate if they said "our online licensing system will see a dual-boot machine as 2 machines".  If it's possible for the hostid and resulting license server code to be identical, I can't see how it could tell the two OSes apart if key was only checked out once, and entered manually.

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16 hours ago, danw said:

I presume that provided your hostid does remain the same between both OSes, you could install the license to one, and then manually enter the same keys to the other without using the online service.

Recently I had a bit of a snafu when switching to CentOS. I am motivated to learn Linux, so I did not keep a Windows partition around to fall back on, but i neglected to return my license first.

When I went to retrieve my license, there were none to be had. I contacted SideFX, and they instructed me to simply change my host id to match the host id of the licenses.

Once I had, sure enough, the licenses were available again. I did not have to return any licenses. They were just there ready for install. Technical support advised that if I wanted a unique name for my LinuxOS I would have to return the licenses and reinstall them. But I think that provided that the host id (and the MAC address, I assume) is the same I do not think that the license server would notice, otherwise I would have had to have returned the old licences before installing them on CentOS.

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This is the mail I got from SESI support.
"Hello Jonas,

While it is possible to have them working on both operating systems, our license tools aren't really prepared to handle that situation.

If you manage to get your licenses working in both OS, we have no objections on using the licenses that way. However, I cannot help you set this up, as the tools are not intended to work that way.

Cheers,
Silvina"

 

So I guess now is just a matter of trying out the different suggestions and see if I can get it to work!
If so, I'll let you all know and if not, I'll let you know as well.

More suggestions are welcome!

I'll keep this updated once I've given it a try :-)

 

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Yep. I confirmed that the application keys that I had installed on windows is in fact identical to the keys currently installed on CentOS. I do not know about the server key, as I no longer have access to this information. I can tell that this is the same key after installing it more than once.

I am 99% sure though that if you just make sure that the host name is the same on both computers you should be fine.

Be sure though that you rename your host id to match *existing* licenses, or return all your licenses first. So if your windows host is named "MrBob" and existed before the CentOS partition, rename your CentOS host to "MrBob" to match.

Once done, go to "install licenses" and see what's there. AFAIK, and I could be wrong, from that point there is no further communication needed between SideFX and your license server, and so if keys are generated from the MAC address and Host ID exclusively, then the license server should assume that there is no difference. The only thing that might snag you up is the server key. I do not really know what that is exactly.

However, you can confirm if they are the same by going into the license admin and comparing 'view->diagnostic information'. If they are the same, I cannot imagine how this should be problematic, and it should just be a matter of installing the same keys on both servers either manually or otherwise.

Edited by shawn_kearney
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On 10/28/2016 at 5:28 AM, eco_bach said:

Thanks Jonas. Would be curious about any potential performance differences. My understanding is that Linux is better with memory management and that performance is otherwise identical.

I do seem to have to resort to killing Houdini less frequently, esc key seems a bit more responsive. I've had a couple of run away sims, but IIRC the only one I really had to kill was one I am having trouble with that seems to always crash at frame 291 (possible bug?).

Blender is much faster on Linux and Maya seems to load faster, but I don't use Maya much more than a front-end for Renderman.

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Hi,

I also have my Indie license running on my dual boot Mac with Linux (CentOS) and Windows. But you can't use it under MacOS, because it adds .local to your hostname, which results in an other server key and

in that case doesn't work. You then would have to transfer your license via SESI.

Cheers

Dominik

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