License file CORRUPT

You may find that, after having installed the license file, the program still doesn't run and prints a message "LICENSE CORRUPT". There are a few possible causes. To explain how this error may come about, and how you overcome it, a few words on license files.

Each license file consists of pairs of lines. The first of each pair is text that states in more or less readable format (for a human reader) a couple of typical aspects: A 'feature' that you are allowed to use (for instance 'ADF'), an expiration date, a (maximum) release (version) number of the software and so on. The second line contains the same information in encrypted format: a long string of characters that appear to make little sense. The program reads the license file and checks, with its internal encrypting formulas, that the two lines match. If not, it stops and prints the "LICENSE CORRUPT" message.

So, there are three common reasons why this may happen to you:

1. You are using a license file for another version of the software than your executables correspond to. Newer (major) releases may contain a different encrypting formula, so that the match in old license files is not recognized anymore. In particular, the "LICENSE CORRUPT" error will arise if you run ADF1999 (or later) with a license file that was generated for ADF2.3 (or earlier). Verify that your license file and executable belong to the same major release.

2. The license file as it has been created has been modified in some way. Sometimes, people inspect it and 'clean it up' a little bit, for instance by removing 'redundant spaces', or by making some other 'improvements'. Any such modification will spoil the encryption match and lead to the "LICENSE CORRUPT" error. Sometimes the reason lies in the mailing system: if the encrypted line is rather long, the mailer may cut it into two shorter lines. To verify (and correct) this: edit the license file and see if it really consists of pairs of lines as described above. If not, re-unify the broken lines and try again.

You can use the fixlic utility to try to fix this automatically. Please be aware that the fixlic utility will try to fix the $SCMLICENSE file, and replace it with the fixed copy. Thus, you need to make a backup of your license file first, and you need to have write access to the license file


cp $SCMLICENSE $SCMLICENSE.backup
$ADFBIN/fixlic

3. On some machines (and again, the mailer may play a role here as well) the different lines are separated by two (invisible) characters: <CR> and <LF> (carriage-return and new-line), while on others (and ours) there's only a <LF> to separate the lines. The extra <CR> leads to the "LICENSE CORRUPT" error.

We have included a small utility in our package (fix_license, located in the $ADFBIN directory after installation) to correct this problem. Type (assuming the SCMLICENSE environment variable has been set correctly):

fix_license $SCMLICENSE

and any <CR> characters will be removed from license_file. (Your LANG environment variable should preferably be set to 'C').