Sybase: There is no valid license for ASE server product

The Sybase server needs to be restarted. The last time it restarted, the logs showed

kernel Warning: There is no valid license for ASE server product. Server is booting with all the option features disabled.
…
Configuration parameter ‘enable DTM’ can not be enabled without license ‘ASE_DTM’.

Doing “ps -ef | grep lmgrd” showed the license manager was running. To make sure the license manager is running before sybase starts the following was added to the sybase startup script. The script is usually named RUN_DB_SERVER.

echo “Terminating LMGRD…”
/usr/bin/pkill lmgrd
sleep 5

cd $SYBASE/$SYBASE_SYSAM/bin
./lmgrd -c ../licenses/license.dat -l ../log/lmgrd.log
sleep 5

Let’s connect to the server

We connect as sa
$> isql -Usa -P -SDB_SERVER

then check to make sure no one is currently using the db_server:
1> sp_who
2) go

Good. The output shows there is no one using the server. The status for all processes is `sleep’ and the corresponding command is `AWAITING COMMAN/’. At this point we can issue the a `shutdown’. Here the `nowait’ option is used, but may not be necessary depending on the environment.

1> shutdown with nowait
2> go

Server SHUTDOWN by request.
The SQL Server is terminating this process.
Open Client Message
Layer 0, Origin 0, Severity 78, Number 36
Read from SQL server failed.

Starting the server:

The startup of the db_server is done with user ‘sybase’. The SYBASE.sh was sucked in before-hand.

$> nohup sh RUN_DB_SERVER &

Checking the logs revealed:

00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 16:45:20.48 kernel Warning: There is no valid license for ASE server product. Server is booting with all the option features disabled.
00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 16:45:20.50 kernel Max fd 65536 exceeds internal limit of 10000
00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 16:45:20.51 kernel Using config area from primary master device.
00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 16:45:20.52 server Configuration parameter ‘enable DTM’ can not be enabled without license ‘ASE_DTM’.

Again! This either means the license manager was not started or the Sybase server started before the license manager. The former is most likely the case, because `ps -ef | grep lmgrd’ showed the license manager to running. Let’s verify:

$> ps -ef | grep lmgrd

sybadmin 19343 1 0 16:45:15 pts/52 0:00 ./lmgrd -c ../licenses/license.dat -l ../log/lmgrd.log
sybadmin 21353 20947 0 Jan 09 pts/50 0:00 tail -f lmgrd.log

The sleep time of 5 minutes was probably too short. Let’s increase sleep by another 5 seconds and try again.

00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 17:10:59.76 kernel Use license file /opt/sybase_server/ase12.5/SYSAM-1_0/licenses/license.dat.
00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 17:10:59.76 kernel Checked out license ASE_SERVER
00:00000:00000:2007/01/15 17:10:59.76 kernel Adaptive Server Enterprise Edition

Excellent!