Weird Windows license issue

Weird Windows license issue

[Michael Jinks]

My group has a license code for multiple instances of Win2K3 r2
Enterprise, which has worked fine for me when Windows runs as a guest
on VMware and Xen, but now when I try to use it for my first Windows
KVM guest, it's being rejected.  I wouldn't think that the
virtualization platform would matter for this purpose but it's the
only variable I can see between our current working and non-working
installs.

Is this a known issue?  Like, maybe Windows pays attention to the MAC
address or CPU info when processing the license key and doesn't like
some checksum somewhere?  I know others are using Win2K3 on KVM so I
know it should work...

Thanks,
--Michael

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Sterling Windmill]

What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific), or is it failing to activate over the internet (it may be that you have just hit the limit for how many times a given key can be activated)?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Jinks" <michael.jinks@gmail.com> 
To: kvm@vger.kernel.org 
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2009 6:22:58 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Weird Windows license issue 

My group has a license code for multiple instances of Win2K3 r2 
Enterprise, which has worked fine for me when Windows runs as a guest 
on VMware and Xen, but now when I try to use it for my first Windows 
KVM guest, it's being rejected. I wouldn't think that the 
virtualization platform would matter for this purpose but it's the 
only variable I can see between our current working and non-working 
installs. 

Is this a known issue? Like, maybe Windows pays attention to the MAC 
address or CPU info when processing the license key and doesn't like 
some checksum somewhere? I know others are using Win2K3 on KVM so I 
know it should work... 

Thanks, 
--Michael 
-- 
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Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Michael Jinks]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Sterling Windmill<sterling@ampx.net> wrote:
> What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific),

Right, that.  I don't have the screen in front of me so I might be
getting the exact word wrong, but it immediately throws back something
to the effect that the key is invalid.

Since the license key entry stage happens before Windows tries to
bring up networking, I don't think that license exhaustion is a likely
explanation.

Maybe KVM isn't either (yes, it does strike me as unlikely), but like
I said in my first post I'm having a hard time finding other
explanations.

But anyhow.  If license issues like this one aren't known to occur on
KVM, there must be something else going on, so I'll try again and look
elsewhere for the cause of the problem.  Thanks for the info.

Cheers,
-j

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Charles Duffy]

Michael Jinks wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Sterling Windmill<sterling@ampx.net> wrote:
>> What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific),
> 
> Right, that.  I don't have the screen in front of me so I might be
> getting the exact word wrong, but it immediately throws back something
> to the effect that the key is invalid.

Last time I had licensing trouble when installing Windows under KVM 
(IIRC this was Vista, not long after release), I called up Microsoft, 
swore up and down three times that I was using a virtualization product, 
and they gave me a code to punch in that resolved the issue.

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[sudhir kumar]

Hmm... What key are you using. I did not get any issue at all. I am
using a volume key. I did multiple installs and never got such an
issue.

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:32 AM, Michael Jinks<michael.jinks@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Sterling Windmill<sterling@ampx.net> wrote:
>> What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific),
>
> Right, that.  I don't have the screen in front of me so I might be
> getting the exact word wrong, but it immediately throws back something
> to the effect that the key is invalid.
>
> Since the license key entry stage happens before Windows tries to
> bring up networking, I don't think that license exhaustion is a likely
> explanation.
>
> Maybe KVM isn't either (yes, it does strike me as unlikely), but like
> I said in my first post I'm having a hard time finding other
> explanations.
>
> But anyhow.  If license issues like this one aren't known to occur on
> KVM, there must be something else going on, so I'll try again and look
> elsewhere for the cause of the problem.  Thanks for the info.
>
> Cheers,
> -j
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>



-- 
Sudhir Kumar

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Yaniv Kaul]

On 7/3/2009 2:02 AM, Michael Jinks wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Sterling Windmill<sterling@ampx.net>  wrote:
>    
>> What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific),
>>      
> Right, that.  I don't have the screen in front of me so I might be
> getting the exact word wrong, but it immediately throws back something
> to the effect that the key is invalid.
>
> Since the license key entry stage happens before Windows tries to
> bring up networking, I don't think that license exhaustion is a likely
> explanation.
>
> Maybe KVM isn't either (yes, it does strike me as unlikely), but like
> I said in my first post I'm having a hard time finding other
> explanations.
>
> But anyhow.  If license issues like this one aren't known to occur on
> KVM, there must be something else going on, so I'll try again and look
> elsewhere for the cause of the problem.  Thanks for the info.
>    
Any chance you are using OEM licenses?
> Cheers,
> -j
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>    

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Michael Jinks]

Sorry for the slow response, mail sorting issue.  No, this is a
license our team purchased for doing large numbers of public lab
installations.

I've used it successfully with the same ISO image I'm trying now.
Only difference (that I know of) is that my previous installations
were on VMware and Xen.

We're supposed to have a new license code on the way, will see if that
makes a difference.  Hooray for welded-shut software!



On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Yaniv Kaul<ykaul@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 7/3/2009 2:02 AM, Michael Jinks wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Sterling Windmill<sterling@ampx.net>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I
>>> doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific),
>>>
>>
>> Right, that.  I don't have the screen in front of me so I might be
>> getting the exact word wrong, but it immediately throws back something
>> to the effect that the key is invalid.
>>
>> Since the license key entry stage happens before Windows tries to
>> bring up networking, I don't think that license exhaustion is a likely
>> explanation.
>>
>> Maybe KVM isn't either (yes, it does strike me as unlikely), but like
>> I said in my first post I'm having a hard time finding other
>> explanations.
>>
>> But anyhow.  If license issues like this one aren't known to occur on
>> KVM, there must be something else going on, so I'll try again and look
>> elsewhere for the cause of the problem.  Thanks for the info.
>>
>
> Any chance you are using OEM licenses?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -j
>> --
>> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
>> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>
>
>

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Dor Laor]

On 07/06/2009 06:33 PM, Michael Jinks wrote:
> Sorry for the slow response, mail sorting issue.  No, this is a
> license our team purchased for doing large numbers of public lab
> installations.
>
> I've used it successfully with the same ISO image I'm trying now.
> Only difference (that I know of) is that my previous installations
> were on VMware and Xen.
>
> We're supposed to have a new license code on the way, will see if that
> makes a difference.  Hooray for welded-shut software!
>

Do you try to use -smp > 1?
Currently we present each vcpu as a separate socket. Some windows OS 
have their vcpu disappear. Maybe it hurts installation more.
There is work in progress to optionally represent them as cores.

Also, it worth juggling with some -cpu options.

>
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Yaniv Kaul<ykaul@redhat.com>  wrote:
>> On 7/3/2009 2:02 AM, Michael Jinks wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Sterling Windmill<sterling@ampx.net>
>>>   wrote:
>>>
>>>> What do you mean by "rejected"? Is the installer not taking your key (I
>>>> doubt this would be caused by anything KVM specific),
>>>>
>>> Right, that.  I don't have the screen in front of me so I might be
>>> getting the exact word wrong, but it immediately throws back something
>>> to the effect that the key is invalid.
>>>
>>> Since the license key entry stage happens before Windows tries to
>>> bring up networking, I don't think that license exhaustion is a likely
>>> explanation.
>>>
>>> Maybe KVM isn't either (yes, it does strike me as unlikely), but like
>>> I said in my first post I'm having a hard time finding other
>>> explanations.
>>>
>>> But anyhow.  If license issues like this one aren't known to occur on
>>> KVM, there must be something else going on, so I'll try again and look
>>> elsewhere for the cause of the problem.  Thanks for the info.
>>>
>> Any chance you are using OEM licenses?
>>> Cheers,
>>> -j
>>> --
>>> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
>>> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>>
>>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Weird Windows license issue

[Michael Jinks]

Sorry to clutter everybody's inbox with another installment of this,
but just for the archive: whatever was going on here, it isn't
KVM-related.  A colleague started having the same issue with our
license key as of today on unrelated hardware.  Maybe it was
time-coded or something.


On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Michael Jinks<michael.jinks@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for the slow response, mail sorting issue.  No, this is a
> license our team purchased for doing large numbers of public lab
> installations.
>
> I've used it successfully with the same ISO image I'm trying now.
> Only difference (that I know of) is that my previous installations
> were on VMware and Xen.
<snip, for mercy's sake>