CityEngine2012 is not authorized for use error when utilizing network license

Question

We have access to a university-wide site license for ArcGIS and CityEngine products.  We have CityEngine installed on 8 workstations and 7 of them work.  The lone holdout DID work last week but now is no longer able to open.  We get the error:

"CityEngine is not authorized for use.  Access the ArcGIS Administrator.  Click on the product folder on the left (e.g. Desktop), then select the Single Use product you will be using and click the 'Authorize Now' button.  If you have already received an authorization file from Esir, choose the third option 'I have received an authorization file from Esri and am now ready to finish the authorization process'

The license is authorized and, as I said, we use it on many other workstations plus there are labs all over campus that use it.  NOTE: there ARE 500 available licenses when I go to try to start CityEngine.

The only thing that has changed from when it worked last week and stopped working yesterday is that a new site license was put into place.  I don't think that's causing it because everything else is working but I just thought I'd mention it.  I did check the esri.license file in the user's home directory and it looks the same as all the others.  I tried changing the DNS name of the license server to the IP address instead and also added the port but none of that worked.

Any other suggestions?

MatthiasBuehler1 · Answer

Hi,

Yes, the 2013 version has changed a bit ( new license.config path ).

I recommend to user CE2013. It's available for free with a 2012 license anyway..

Ok ?

M.

V_StuartFoote · Answer

Dori,

CityEngine should have installed a license configuration file esriLicense.config to the C:\ProgramData\Esri directory.  The older 2012 release put it in the home folder for the user doing the installation.

Check that it is present, is readable by unprivileged users, and that the contents are similar to this:CITYENGINE_CONFIG=TRUE
SOFTWARE_CLASS_CITYENGINE=Advanced
SEAT_PREFERENCE_CITYENGINE=Float
LICENSE_SERVER=port@FQDN (or @IP)

If not there (held over from 2012?), see if you can find the existing esri.config or esriLicense.config and review its placement and content, that may give you some idea of why it quit working.

Note that rather than a common location (which may have permissions issues if needing to adjust configuration) you can also create the configuration file(s) in the home directory of each user, and they will each be able to fully configure CityEngine.

Stuart

DoriSajdak · Answer

Today we tried logging into this machine with an account that has administrator privs.  CityEngine works.  We logged out and logged in with an account without admin privs and CityEngine doesn't work.  When we right click on the shortcut and choose Run as Administrator, CityEngine does launch (when we tried this a few days ago, it didn't).  I'm not sure why this is happening like this since we run it under an unprivileged account elsewhere and even on this machine it worked previously but I guess we have it working.  I would just like to know why it needs to be run with elevated privs now.