Hi Folks,

I've been presented with an unexpected problem and I'm not sure if I can resolve it without some input from people.

I have on this site 3 license servers running Solaris, one at;

Code:

SunOS xxxxxx 5.8 Generic_117350-08 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10

One at;

Code:

SunOS yyyyyy 5.7 Generic_106541-05 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10

And one at;

Code:

SunOS zzzzzz 5.6 Generic_105181-21 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-250

As any of you will see they have been around a while, in reality these machines only run

Code:

lmgrd

and Netscape Server 4.0 - I can hear you all laughing now. But I'm going to continue, it is Easter Sunday after all.

My original thoughts were that I'd create a Solaris 10 or 11 virtual machine on VMWare and then run the three licence servers as zones, as I could have explicitly set the hostid within the zone. However my trusted leaders have expressly prohibited "virtuals within virtuals", I have done some prliminary testing and that seems to work OK - the setting the hostid bit.

These licenses were "Perpetual Licences", costing $100K per seat - however it would seem that the perpetual refered the life of the original company granting them not the user! So it is not possible to have the licence files regenerated for some of the applications hence the issue. Add to that that this cheapskate outfit doesn't have support with any of our vendors, some of you I'm sure will understand.

I have tried the instructions here but to no avail, although it does change the hostid - the hostid command sees an invalid id as it would appear that the code in the example only works for a hostid starting with zero.

So these are hopefully going to be moved to virtual machines like this, I think that I have all the x86 binaries required.

Code:

SunOS aaaaaa 5.11 11.1 i86pc i386 i86pc

I've not really had a problem like this before, especially with the intransigent management refusing to take the advice offered.

Anyone have any ideas - other than find an other employer

MTIA Gull04