Please Make a Registration Key Replaceable at all Times


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I've just had a usb key die on me for the second time in the space of a year. The registration system allows for automatic key replacement once a year. If you need more, then you have to contact support.

I personally am finding this frustrating right now. I've sent an email, and the form said it could take days. That's days my plex server is down. Days my automation system is down. Days my email server, discord bot that servers several guilds, database systems, wikipedia and notekeeping, git services, everything are all down. And not because I'm waiting on hardware, but because I need to wait for another key for software I've paid for, that has an automatic key replacement system. And sure, I'm not some big company, this doesn't affect others to badly (bar the bot that's down), but this is important to me and a few others.

Why is there such a limit? The old GUID's are blacklisted, and I'm not seeing a benefit with the once a year key replacement.

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15 minutes ago, tjb_altf4 said:

I've never had a key die, but if I did I would pop in the replacement, copy backup config and run in trial mode, which should net you up to 60 days for a replacement key to arrive which should be more than adequate.

That's a brilliant idea, didn't even think of that!

I tried, but it's throwing this: `It is not possible to use a Trial key with an existing Unraid OS installation.`

So, can't do that.

 

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Unfortunately this would allow widespread mis-use of the Unraid license.

 

The updated blacklist is issued with each Unraid release.    
 

So if your suggestion is implemented I could buy 1 license and then use the unlimited transfers to create as many boot drives as I liked which would all work on the current release.    Then when Unraid is upgraded I just buy a bunch of new usb drives and use the unlimited transfer to create new boot drives that work on that release.

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Interesting, wasn't aware the blacklist was baked into the system.

I wonder if there's a way to still alleviate the issue I'm having without to much disruption to the system in place. Maybe allowing trail keys for existing unraid configurations. I believe it has to ask the unraid servers for a key to be issued, so it shouldn't be to hard to do a check there. Is there a reason for the current prevention there?
I'll agree it's outside of a trail scenario, but it would allow us to bring the server back up, for a while. I wouldn't even care if it was for a smaller time frame as long as it'd hold until a replacement key is issued.

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As a licensed version of Unraid has to be able to work without an internet connection the blacklist has to be built in to each release.

 

The trial version specifically has a requirement that it has a internet connection so it can use a more dynamic blacklist mechanism.

 

The trial version is deliberately set up the way it is to prevent people just continually getting a trial version and never actually buying a license.

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56 minutes ago, Ryonez said:

Interesting, wasn't aware the blacklist was baked into the system.

I wonder if there's a way to still alleviate the issue I'm having without to much disruption to the system in place. Maybe allowing trail keys for existing unraid configurations. I believe it has to ask the unraid servers for a key to be issued, so it shouldn't be to hard to do a check there. Is there a reason for the current prevention there?
I'll agree it's outside of a trail scenario, but it would allow us to bring the server back up, for a while. I wouldn't even care if it was for a smaller time frame as long as it'd hold until a replacement key is issued.

I think you CAN use a trial key as long as you know all the drive assignments.  If you delete the sonfig/super.dat file off the flash drive and replace it with the default you will no longer get the warning but will have to redo all your drive assignments to get back to where you were.

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Hmm, isn't the key 

28 minutes ago, remotevisitor said:

As a licensed version of Unraid has to be able to work without an internet connection the blacklist has to be built in to each release.

 

The trial version specifically has a requirement that it has a internet connection so it can use a more dynamic blacklist mechanism.

 

The trial version is deliberately set up the way it is to prevent people just continually getting a trial version and never actually buying a license.

Hmm... Does the trail key have to be online all the time, or just for registration?

And could some sort of "emergency key" system be set up? Have it work like a trial, except this requires an old key to be present/given and will only last 7-15 days.
Then the old key can be added to the "live" blacklist (prevents multiple emergency keys from being issued), while giving a licence holder the ability to get a server back up asap whille they what for a proper one to be issued. The keys should have the dates they work in them, so it would work for an offline system to.

 

 

8 minutes ago, itimpi said:

I think you CAN use a trial key as long as you know all the drive assignments.  If you delete the sonfig/super.dat file off the flash drive and replace it with the default you will no longer get the warning but will have to redo all your drive assignments to get back to where you were.


It would work, if I wanted to manually go through and set every thing back up the way it was. Drives, docker, plugins, vms... It's a bit much.

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10 minutes ago, Ryonez said:

It would work, if I wanted to manually go through and set every thing back up the way it was. Drives, docker, plugins, vms... It's a bit much.

I think all the other settings can be kept.

10 minutes ago, Ryonez said:

Hmm... Does the trail key have to be online all the time, or just for registration?

It has to be online any time the array is started.

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Would the proposal below work better as a middle ground?

 

Having key generation based on a user-selectable "nominated device", which can be either

  1. USB stick - use the GUID - default selection - easy no-effort option for majority of users
  2. or HDD / SSD - use model + serial number

 

This will require minimal additional work (a few GUI boxes + additional function to generate a pseudo GUID based on HDD / SSD model + serial).

  • No change to existing license process and key replacement etc.
  • No change to piracy risk (I believe the model + serial number is unique to a storage device)
  • Better reliability for the users who require it

 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, itimpi said:

I think all the other settings can be kept.

Now I've opened my eyes and actually read you post properly, I see that I missed a bit. Sorry about that.
Gave that a go and it seems to work. Resetting the configuration is nerve racking though, everything is saying it'll wipe stuff.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
28 minutes ago, x88dually said:

Sorry, an error (403) occurred registering USB Flash GUID 0930-6544-377D-C42159580FD9

The error is: GUID '0951-1666-CFA5-E331292FCD97' is blacklisted

 

 

Brand new,   WTH  ??

 

7 minutes ago, ChatNoir said:

My bad, I misspoke, I meant what kind of usb flash drive ?


Maybe this would be better making a support thread for. This one is a feature request thread.

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  • 5 months later...

This is indeed a weak point of Unraid.
I didn't realize this.
At Discord there is a guy with a broken USB second time within a year. Happening at new years eve!

He has to wait a couple days now before a new registration key will be suppoprted I suppose.

It would drive me crazy, because I run My full automation, security and unfi controller in Unraid.

If Unraid means to be a professional system it must do this better

 

There must be a better option to support and protect Unraid.

Why operating by an USB? Because USB is always very weak. Why Unraid not on the disk itself without USB. Or at least create an better way to get a registery key after a broken USB. I understand the miss-use posibility, but there must be better solutions to quaranty operation of Unraid.

This make me think to look around for another hypervisor or solution.

I realy don't want to wait for a couple off days

Edited by canedje
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1 hour ago, canedje said:

Why Unraid not on the disk itself without USB.

My personal opinion on that is that USB is more reliable than the drives.  I've got a total of 24 hard drives between two servers, and my pair of flash drives have outlasted every one of the drives.

 

The USB is only used as a boot device.  It's basically used extremely little (only at boot and only to store any settings changes).  At the end of the day, most users will actually read or write to it maybe at best one a month.

1 hour ago, canedje said:

At Discord there is a guy with a broken USB second time within a year. Happening at new years eve!

 

You're never actually out of luck.  You can always set up a trial key on a new flash.  Assign the drives accordingly and you're basically off to the races.

 

That being said, some people do have trouble with the drives.  I believe that Limetech has implied that a better solution for replacement etc is coming soon(tm)

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  • 4 months later...

I AM NOT VERY HAPPY THAT IT WILL TAKE UP TO THREE DAYS TO GET A NEW KEY FOR A FAULTY USB DRIVE.

LOGIN PIC - 03 SHOWS THAT THE  iKVM HTML5 SHOW THAT IT DID LOGIN BUT I STILL COULD NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.

I TRIED TO FOLLOW INSTRUTIONS TO COPY FILE TO NEW USB.   A NEW REGISTRATION KEY IS REQUIRED.  NOW A WAIT FOR THREE DAYS ?

 

login - 01.JPG

login - 02.JPG

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@Frank Ruhl
Please calm down on the caps, it's considered as shouting and thus rude.

Your reply here seems to be about two things. One is the timeframe for getting a replacement key manually. There is a system in place were you can replace a key yourself, but it has a one year cooldown between uses. You've made no mention of weather or not you've even attempted this. If you have, there are suggestions above for using a trial key, which did work for me until my key was replace by the UnRAID team.
The second thing seems to be some sort of issue? I recommend making a post in the general support forum. That is where you'd get support for problems, this is a feature request thread and isn't related to the problem.

Good luck, I hope you are able to get help sorting it all out.

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