Full and Starter editions

[retraite]

A question if I may (it may be that this is dealt with somewhere in your documentation, if so I apologise.). Due to an “incident”, our ISP is unable to supply internet access to 30 homes, of which ours is one. The problem started on 7/1/2021 and will apparently not be repaired until 12/1/2021. To be fair to Orange, they immediately provided an “airbox” to give us internet access via 4G. Although this solves our internet problem, it leaves my music servers on the network that does not have internet access. A side effect of this is that my Minimserver 2 installations have reverted to the starter edition, without the option to reinstall the licence, depriving me of the additional functionality of the full package.
Further investigation reveals that the minimserver installation on my Windows PC becomes “full” again when I switch to the “airbox” and re-establish internet connection.
Does this mean that it is not possible to use the full, paid for, version of Minimserver 2 without being online?
I appreciate that this question is likely to become academic again after Tuesday when our fibre connection will, one hopes, be restored, but for non-technical types like me, it would be good to know if this is how the package is supposed to work.

[simoncn]

MinimServer should be able to run with a full license when the machine running it doesn't have an internet connection. The internet connection should only be needed to activate the full license.

As a test, I tried disabling the network connection from my Windows PC running MinimServer. MinimServer continued to run with the full license enabled.

What exactly happens when you switch your Windows PC from the airbox to your home network? How do you know that the license type has changed? Do you see an error message? If so, where do you see the message and what does it say?

I would like to find out what is happening because the ability to run with full functionality and no internet connection is an important feature of MinimServer.

[retraite]

Hi Simon
Thank you for the reply. I’m running 3 instances of Minimserver, one on a Synology DS214+, one on a Synology DS218+ and one which is a content backup for the other two on a desktop PC running Windows 10 Pro. The problem is the same on all three.
Normally the resident network is connected via ethernet to the Livebox fibre router (I’m in France). But at the moment I can only switch the Windows installation between wireless connections to the temporary Airbox and the resident internetless network, the latter via an access point. When I go to the latter and open Minimwatch, I get a red minimserver icon and a message telling me that minimserver has reverted to the starter edition. On the configuration page, under “This page was last updated at…” the message is as below.
License server error 403; resetting to Starter Edition
License server error 403
After deselecting the resident network and reconnecting the Airbox a restart of Minimserver and Minimwatch on the PC gives me a yellow icon, followed by the green and the configuration page has restored my license to full with correct date details etc.
I have done this more than half a dozen times before writing this. The sequence is exactly the same every time.
I regret I can’t try the two Synology boxes until our cable connection is restored as they re not wireless capable. I will still have the Airbox after we do get it back and will try the same test then.
Given your reply, I assume that the problem is with my installation, but I apparently do not have the skill to find it.
I’m amazed to discover that I have had Minimserver for 8 years and this is the first problem I have encountered since the early days of Minimstreamer, so before I forget to mention it, Thank you for a long period of trouble free musical enjoyment.

[simoncn]

Thank you for explaining this.

It seems the network fault is causing your router to return a 403 error when MinimServer tries to connect to the license server to check your license.

An internet fault would normally cause the connnection attempt to fail. MinimServer handles this correctly and doesn't reset the license to Starter.

The problem is that MinimServer thinks the license server has returned a 403 error, whereas in reality the license server hasn't received anything and the 403 error has come from the Orange network.

I am not sure whether a solution for this is possible. There are situations that can cause the license server to return a "real" 403 error, so it might not be safe for MinimServer to ignore all 403 errors. I will need to consider this carefully and try some experiments.

Thanks very much for letting me know about this.

[simoncn]

I have a fix for this that I think should handle your situation correctly. Please try a test build and let me know what happens. I have sent you a PM with details of how to install and run the test build. Many thanks.

[retraite]

Hi Simon
I’m pleased to report that, having followed the instructions you gave, the test build has cleared the problem on my PC installation. I have obviously not been able to do likewise for the Synology boxes yet, but presumably would be able to do so once the Internet is available again.
Thank you again for your efforts on my behalf.