Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hello,

I would kindly like to inform you that Maxwell is not the first and not the only program that uses RLM as his license-server.
If you already know that, you definetely shouldn't act like you do here or you cause serious trouble and very angry users !!!!

Let me eyplain why:

Your Maxwell 3 installation is very excentric concerning the RLM-procedure and has absolutely NO !!! infos of how to integrate Maxwell 3 into an existing RLM-Server installation.
That is a serious No-Go and absolutely not professional !

As a standard defined by the RLM-makers, all necessary files for a licensed program should only be copied into the RLM-folder so that RLM finds the .lic and ISV-Server (.set) at startup !
That ensures that one RLM-server can handle multiple licensed programs of different companys.

So, why don't you follow that simple rule ?

In my case, I have a running RLM-License server for ARNOLD Render since a year and it was not possible to get Maxwell 3 running with it. No way.
After working on this now for the whole day, I finally found a working solution and thanks to SolidAngle who are much less complicated than you are, it now works the other way round.

I had to kill my Arnold-RLM-server, had to install the NL-RLM-Server and could manage Arnold to work with it simply by copying the Arnold.lic, SolidAngle.set and .opt-File into the NL-RLM-Folder and thankfully, that worked at least.
And when I checked the properties of the NL_RLM windows-service, I know now why Maxwell 3 could never work with the previous standard Arnold RLM-installation.
If Solidangle would work like you do, that would have been also impossible !

If any other company now does the same shi... that you did here, the users are in serious trouble.

So please, change that with the next update and follow the simple rules that Reprise has formed to ensure that every program works with one single Standard RLM-Installation.
There is absolutely no reason for exotic distribution of .lic and .set-files over the whole system.

Maxwell is not alone on the market !


Kind regards

Hello Ralf,

Absolutely, having compatibility with existent RLM servers running is important, actually one of the reasons we have switched to RLM is to simplify the workflow avoiding the need of having one license server for each application.

The process to reuse an existent RLM server was probably not explained properly in the documentation. The new v3 docs are composed by hundreds of new sections and probably that one was too hidden, sorry about that. We have updated that area, now you can read how to proceed here:

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mxdocsv3/Licensing

Please check the section "How to integrate Maxwell licenses into an existing RLM server" and let us know if you get any issue.

In the next patch we will make it clearer in the installation process how to proceed if there is already an RLM server running.

Thanks,

Juan

I guess it's a bit late for me to integrate my Maxwell setup since I already had an RLM running for my Mari license. Running the Maxwell RLM did create a bit of a headache for me with regards to port access as Foundary's RLM was using the same port. Granted I fixed the problem by editting the .lic file to point at a new port.

You don't think I need to redo my license setup with integration? Frankly it took a while to get Maxwell license going and I fear tweaking the RLM setup will create more issues. I wish the licensing for Maxwll RLM was a smoother process.

juan wrote:….

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mxdocsv3/Licensing

Please check the section "How to integrate Maxwell licenses into an existing RLM server" and let us know if you get any issue.

In the next patch we will make it clearer in the installation process how to proceed if there is already an RLM server running.

I have to tell you guys, this RLM thing in 3.0 is a total nightmare … i had no idea it was happening and it will force me to subnet my licenses and drastically increase my licensing management complexity.

For the short term (i'm waisting $3k of hardware to do this ) I tried putting this on my mac laptop which also has a Foundry RLM running on it. The mac isn't very friendly running things like this though. I walked through your documentation and I think i need to copy the the ".set" and the ".lic" files into foundry directories (RLM runs in foundry subdirectories when you install nuke). Copying files like this around into other product directories is beyond hacky, plus the foundry does not fully document where these files are (i found where the ".set" files should go in the massive foundry directory system, but could not find where the ".lic" files should go in the foundry system).

I'm pretty much dead in the water on this … if the floating license would come with 1 fixed license … i could at least do something. I dare not touch my main rendering servers (i.e. delay the film renders which could push release dates). I think what I need to do is give up running this on a mac, and try to do a clean install of it on a windows machine. Also I think part of the licensing process went through before I realized it was conflicting with the Foundry/NUKE RLM, so i think i will need to revoke my license to put it on a ms-windows machine ?

Really sorry for the inconveniences, we have added info to more pages now on how to make Maxwell run with an existing RLM server install. I just want to add though that even with this setup (all .lic files in the same folder), most apps that use RLM also set their port to a default port, and you'll have to change that in the .lic file in case there is a conflict. We will add more walkthroughs and details in the coming days.

Patrick, you can activate that floating license 3 times, so you can go ahead and activate it on the windows machine as well.

One thing I don't understand though with what you are saying regarding subnets and licensing complexity, wouldn't you have this problem with any two different products that use RLM? If you try to install any other application on that machine that also requires RLM, how would you do that?

Patrik, we have just sent you a mail with additional help for your issue.

Ralf, if our reply helped you, I kindly suggest to rename the subject of this thread to facilitate other people when they search for help. Of course you opened the thread so it is your call :)

Juan, thanks for the reply.
I renamed the thread.

Of coarse you seem not to be the only company who cause problems with RLM-licensing because of their own philosophy of where to put in the needed files for the RLM server.
But things could be so easy if everyone follows this simple rule:
Put all what is needed for your program into the RLM-main-folder, regardless if he already exists or if you are the first ones who use it on a system.
For the first case, the installation routine can search for an existing RLM-Filder or any user can copy the needed files later by hand, that is really no problem.
When the RLM-Server starts, he checks his own folder for existing .lic, .set and .opt-files.


But there is another problem with your rlm_nl windows-service: it doesn't automatically start up with the windows boot.
Can you give us the needed command-procedure to fix that please ?
The common syntax for a manual installation as a windows service is something like this:

rlm -install_service -dlog "C:\Program Files\RLM\MyLogfile.txt"

But I have doubts that this is right for your version when I see its properties in the windows services.


Btw, when I had my troubles with the licensing procedure, I retried the licensing activation several times over again and have now 3 sections in my .lic-file on my same machine.
I deleted 2 sections.
Is that a problem when I have to reactivate it later again or want to activate it some day on another machine ?

juan wrote:Patrik, we have just sent you a mail with additional help for your issue.

Awesome … that email helped a ton and I am go to go right now ...

mihai wrote:Patrick, you can activate that floating license 3 times, so you can go ahead and activate it on the windows machine as well.
One thing I don't understand though with what you are saying regarding subnets and licensing complexity, wouldn't you have this problem with any two different products that use RLM? If you try to install any other application on that machine that also requires RLM, how would you do that?

What I have been doing is connecting a portable computer between multiple server grids to run the vfx workflows. This also allows me to validate the runs on the portable computer before I kick off the runs (this is not cloud rendering, but isolated grids of computers where most of the computers are not the same). I'm doing a low budget feature, so their isn't a dedicated guy running the grids: artists that are techie run the grid, so the network is much more hacky then you'd find in a major shop. I barely understand RLM and two other rights management systems that run in the grid (ilok, RLM and some other one that sounds like RLM) are running on the network, i just try not to touch the 3 rights management systems. Long story short, with my "artist simplified" rights management approach, when I have a rights management issue i just split up the grid and dedicate computers to that part of the grid (this isn't super efficient though as it requires people to then distribute the work). I'm sure if artists were not managing the grid we would do it another way, but it has worked so far and has been very efficient (since with low budget you have a mix of machines and little subnets, not nice clean grids of the same machine with good routers, like you would have at major shops).

Either way, thanks guys for the help … I got things running for now

But there is another problem with your rlm_nl windows-service: it doesn't automatically start up with the windows boot.
Can you give us the needed command-procedure to fix that please ?

One the service rlm_nl has been installed, open a command line terminal ( in Windows, look for "cmd" ) running it as an Administrator or account with administration privileges antd type:
Note the space between "=" and "auto"
sc is the Windows services configuration and management tool

If you tried to run sc without administrator privileges, an error like this would pop up The installer must be run with administrator privileges to be able to create/modify services.

RK_Art, the service starts automatically for me. But in my case I needed to reboot Windows after installing the RLM server/service otherwise it didn't pick up the service correctly, even though it said it was running.

But things could be so easy if everyone follows this simple rule:
Put all what is needed for your program into the RLM-main-folder, regardless if he already exists or if you are the first ones who use it on a system.
For the first case, the installation routine can search for an existing RLM-Filder or any user can copy the needed files later by hand, that is really no problem.
When the RLM-Server starts, he checks his own folder for existing .lic, .set and .opt-files.

Doesn't sound like a too flawless approach either though? I mean making the installer first search on a user machine for a possible RLM install? On Win/OSX/Linux? mmm....how long would that take first of all? So you still have the problem of the user perhaps not knowing that they already have an rlm server/service running.

Second, even if they knew that and simply copied the files, everybody uses the default port of 5053, so you would have problems there again. And you'd have to know to change the port etc.

Mihai,

in my case, both, Maxwell 3 and Arnold, work flawless with port 5053 side by side, no need to change it in one of the .lic's.
The status lists the ISV-servers using different ports, 57861 for Maxwell 3 and 57862 for Arnold.
And both work fine.

Concerning the installer you're right.
But installing it again without a check in a running RLM-system is also no good idea.
So, the user must know if a RLM is already running and if so, he should be able to simply copy the files to the right folder.
I don't see another way than to do that so far.

Concerning nl_rlm service:
It was already listet as Automatic, but didn't start with the windows-boot.
I had to start it manually.
I did now the cmd-command and will try later a new system boot.

Edit:
The service starts now automatically with the windows boot and both licenses (Maxwell 3 and Arnold) are working together fine.