Posted this elsewhere and it was suggested I move to this forum.
A user posted this:
"AutoCAD 2012 freezes on startup at the point it says checking license at the bottom left hand corner.
If I Control Alt Delete and close down AutoCAD and restart the application it comes up fast and right away.
It has been happening frequently on a few machines now. Any suggestions on a fix?"
and I added:
I am having the same issue except when I kill the application and restart it, I still can't obtain a license. This is happening not only in AutoCAD 2012, but also AutoCAD 2011 which makes me think it is possibly an issue with the license server software. I have submitted a case on this, but on the off chance someone in support is monitoring the forum and would like to help out.
We have done quite a bit of testing and so far think it may be related to an environment variable we had set to look for license servers (one of which no longer existed). There wasn't an issue prior to installing the new NLM software and it only seemed to affect AutoCAD, not Revit. Still testing to see if getting rid of the variable has resolved the issue completely.
if you have specified any dead servers in any of the license server locations and if you have FLEXLM_TIMEOUT variable specified, you might see similar behaviour.
Please delete cascadeinfo.cas before doing more tests
Also please try to create client diagnostics log to check the client behaviour.
Hashim,
Are you saying it is a dead server and timeout together causing the problem? The variable with the dead server had been in use for awhile, but more recently we did add the timeout variable.
Thanks for your input.
Yes, it tries to connect the dead server for the time specified in the timeout, before trying to connect to the good server,
if you clean up the variables as mentioned earlier, it should be fixed
I added the diagnostic variable and deleted the cascadeinfo.cas file. When I open AutoCAD 2012 I get the attached error message.
On a related note, do you know of an Autodesk white paper describing all the variables related to FlexLM and supported by the Autodesk products?
Assuming licpath.lic is pointing to the correct server.
this error is shown for every feature code it's checking on the server, if you continue further, at some point it should take the available license on the server(if any). if not you should see the DENIED error in the server log.
if you are referring to client variables , I don't know of any specific document listing all the variables,
If you are referring to the option file variables, then it is documented here
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS1055247
TIMEOUT and Borrow are related to some product implementations so it might not work on all Autodesk products.
I checked the c:\program files\autodesk\autocad 2012 - English\licpath.lic and it is pointing to the correct server. The error message I showed comes up three times....then churns for a while...comes up two more times, then Autocad 2012 gets a license.
We have also noticed it opens hundreds connections to the license server by watching our Riverbed appliance which was throwing errors that we are exceeding the allowed connection limits.
This is the cascading behaviour of the Autodesk licenses as descrbed here
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS16981643
Autocad 2012 will look for the cheapest available license first and then continue till the next available one.
Without diagnostics variable this is transparent to user.
Network connections
For every successfull connection you shoud see one connection attempt to following ports
27000-2009 and 2080. ->If there are re-connect attempts the number could be more than 11, when tested on LAN, if you are on WAN it could be higher.
for every cascading order this number could be repeated (not exact multiples, some ports might not be re-scanned)
You can check this behaviour on a client using wireshark or procmon.
you can avoid the port scanning by mentioning the lmgrd port in the client. you can do this by specifying ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE in the system environment variable
name:ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE
value:27000@servername (27000 is default lmgrd port, replace the servername with yours)
Hope this helps; if not you will have to configure Riverbed to allow more connections.
I have added the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE with the value specified (set to 27000@"ourservername", and it still isn't working. That is, AutoCAD does come up eventually (maybe a minute and a half), but it seems to be looking on the ports you list 27000 - 27009 multiple times.
Multiple connection attempt to the same server ?
is it possible to skip riverbed to connect to the server, just to isolate any packet drops/retries.
Yes to the multiple connections to the same server. I am told No to bypassing the Riverbed.
can you not make an exception for some testing ?
We don't have any riverbed devices to run any tests here.
Do you mean changing the settings of the Riverbed in some way to allow specific traffic or turning it off all together?
Make exceptions only for certain clients and ports (27000-2009,2080) to allow direct connection to the license server.
I am sure your network admin can make this rule for the testing purpose.
Hasim,
Here is the latest. We created the exception for the client machine and about 10 connections are made, and it takes AutoCAD 2012 over 2 minutes to open. When the exception is removed, there are about 40-50 connections, takes AutoCAD 2012 a similar amount of time to open.
AutoCAD 2011 opens in about 20 seconds. Same computer going to the same license server with the Riverbed enabled.
Let's try to isolate the License issue.
if you borrow the license (within Autocad 2012). does it start normally ?. This would tell us if the network communication is the issue.
If not, it could be something else slowing it down.
OK, thanks for testing
If you can test the behaviour with Client diagnostics log you will be able to find out which part of the license takes time.
If it is one license server on your LAN, it should not delay as you mentioned,
but if is on WAN with latency on the network, we will need to find out which part slows the packets. diagnostics log could help.
It seems we have come full circle. Implementing the variable results in the error dialogs I posted earlier in the thread, which you indicated were related to the cascading behavior of licenses.
I did get the log file if it has additional information you need. Can I email it to you rather than posting?
Sorry, I didnt ask you for the actual log earlier, you can remove the diagnostics variable;
I will open a case in your name and someone would contact you for the log.
I am not able to re-produce any of the behaviour in the lab, so It's best someone contacts you directly.