Ongoing web-ui license issues after reboot

Support License
#1

I’m having an ongoing issue (for months now) where every time I reboot my MacBook, Duplicacy web reverts to “trial” or “unlicensed”.

It’s not reasonable to be required to update my hostname on duplicacy.com every time I reboot… any ideas on why it might be happening or what I can do to resolve this?

#2

It was not because of the reboot; it was because the hostname of your MacBook changed. I don’t know why your hostname changed, but if it stays the same Duplicacy won’t invalidate your license after a reboot.

#3

I reboot infrequently, and the issue is only when I reboot. Every time.

Is there an alternate solution that would resolve this? It’s frustrating to be caught in this licensing issue when I’ve paid yet need to perform significant manual actions every time I reboot.

Thx!

#4

Also, it seems to be correct. When I use the ‘hostname’ command in terminal I get this:

MacBookPro:~ joe$ hostname

MacBookPro

#5

Do you update to the same name or does the hostname actually change? If it changes – well, it’s by design – license it tied to the hostname. Make sure your hostname does not change

  1. Depending on the DNS suffix in the current network hostname returned by hostname utility may include FQDN with the suffix. which changes. Do you specify full FQDN or only hostname portion?
  2. If you have another Mac in the network named MacBookPro one of them will change their name to MacBookPro-1. You can’t have two machines in the network with the same hostname. This may also be a culprit
#7

It’s all over the map really. The hostname that Duplicacy requires isn’t the same as what Terminal reports which is strange (hence it requires gchen’s intervention sometimes).

I was only using the hostname portion, and no other macbooks on the entire network.

It’s quite frustrating because I’m a legitimate customer that, because of the license method, has to do a bunch of work/troubleshooting almost every time i reboot. I’ve never had issues like this.

@gchen it looks like there’s no licensing improvements coming any time soon? If this keeps up I may need to look into alternatives because I’m having to avoid rebooting my machine becuase of Duplicacy. Are there refunds available for Duplicacy in cases like this (only if it comes to it, I’d rather not)?

#8

Let’s get to the bottom of it.

There are quite a bunch of hostnames that macOS is using. hostname is just one of them.

For example, look what’s reported on my machine:

alex@alexmbp ~ % scutil --get HostName
HostName: not set
alex@alexmbp ~ %  scutil --get LocalHostName
alexmbp-3
alex@alexmbp ~ %  scutil --get ComputerName
alexmbp
alex@alexmbp ~ % hostname
alexmbp.home.saspus.com

See what happened here? my Mac has at least three hostnames here: especially interesting is local hostname – note -3 suffix? That’s because I had a bunch of my older MacBooks pros, named the same, still powered, sitting around.

I’m not sure which of those hostnames is duplicacy using but if it is “LocalHostName” – then this would explain your issues.

Check what do you see on your machine, then you can force all the hostnames to the same something using --set instead of --get above

#9

Duplicacy uses the hostname returned by hostname but only the first part not the full hostname.

@joe I can work with you to sort this out, but if your host name keeps changing then there is nothing I can do and a refund should be reasonable.

Did you see a line in the log saying The license is licensed to xxx instead of yyy?

#10

Finally got a chance to look at this again…

I checked the duplicacy_web.log file and there was no mention of a license. I manually started a job, and while the WebUI shows “Invalid or Expired License” for the ‘backup’ job, the check ran okay. I checked the log again and there was nothing about a license in the web log, and the only other log generated was one for the check, which also didn’t mention anything about license.