From: Greg Ercolano <erco@(email surpressed)>
Subject: [WINDOWS/ADMIN] Microsoft Remote Desktop + Maya/Mental Ray = Could
   Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 16:19:52 -0400

A few companies bring to my attention a strange problem where apparently
using Microsoft's "Remote Desktop" (RD) affects Maya's *node locked* 
licensing system, causing "Could not get a license" errors, eg:

    Error: (Mayatomr) : could not get a license

Apparently if you reboot a machine and don't log in over RD,
renders run fine. But as soon as you login to the node via RD remotely,
the (node locked) maya/mray licenses start failing.

If you login to the console, apparently that affects the problem,
so it is only when renders run in the background (eg. through Rush,
telnet, rsh, etc) that the licenses are affected.

So if you have *node locked* Maya licenses /and/ use Microsoft's
"Remote Desktop", you should maybe consider using different remote
desktop software (eg. VNC), as I'm told other remote desktop software
doesn't cause this problem.

This apparently is *not* an issue for *floating* licenses, which is
what most people have, and is why most folks don't run into this.

[EDITED 05/15/08 13:27: ADDED SOME INFO FOR CLARITY -ERCO]

Greg Ercolano wrote:
> A few companies bring to my attention a strange problem where apparently
> using Microsoft's "Remote Desktop" (RD) affects Maya's *node locked* 
> licensing system, causing "Could not get a license" errors [..]

    Dean Warren follows up with this info; much thanks to him 
    for these added details.

    Unfortunately the Macrovision link below seems to be stale,
    but there's probably similar docs elsewhere on their site.
	
Dean Warren wrote:
> Hi Greg,
>
> We ran into this exact problem @ guru a couple of months back and I
> discovered it has to do with flexlm + Remote Desktop.
>
> http://www.macrovision.com/pdfs/flexlm_licensing_end_user_guide.pdf
>
> "FLEXlm detects when a node-locked uncounted license is running under
> Windows Terminal Server. To run on Terminal Server remote machines,
> TS_OK must be added to the FEATURE line. Without TS_OK, a user running
> on a Terminal Server client is denied a license."
>
> We didn't implement the 'TS_OK' feature to the flexlm/maya license file,
> instead we just switched back to UltraVNC (we were using it previously
> and someone decided to switch to Remote Desktop, after which we had
> errors all over the place).

    So apparently this problem can be fixed by adding TS_OK to the
    FEATURE line of the maya license.dat file, according to Macrovision's
    docs on flexlm.

    Sounds like Remote Desktop uses Microsoft's "Terminal Services"
    in a way that affects flexlm's licensing system. VNC does not,
    which is why folks with VNC don't encounter this.

    This does *not* affect Rush's license system, as Rush doesn't use
    flexlm or Microsoft's Terminal Services.