lfavlic

[admin_2]

I know that ActiveFax is old news and all but I still have to support it sometimes, in this case the lfavlic will not keep running as a service. That is to say if I launch from the services applet it dies in a minute or two, but if I run it by executing it the process shows up in Task Manager. The computer that is involved is running Windows 2000 and Unity as well as being the ActiveFax server. It has been subject to freezing so that the computer has to be powered down hard and when I launch the lfdriver from Fax Server Monitor I lose mouse and keyboard for about a minute. I am right now especially concerened about the lfavlic is this it's normal behavior? I believe I have seen the service running all the time at other installations.<br><br>Anthony Duval<br>Systems Engineer <br>Special Order Systems<br>aduval@team-sos.com<br>

[#2]

lfavlic is the licensing module the LightningFax guys added to read the security key from Unity and set the number of fax port that are allowed to be active at any given time on the box.

It should be running all the time, it generate a new license every so often that lasts 24 hours (i.e. if you remove the key it's license will expire and fax will stop working correctly).

There were numerous problems logged against this guy along various versions of Unity/LF but with 2.4.6 102 or later it should be pretty ironed out. If it's dropping out of process something is really wrong external to us I would think. All it's doing is reading the secrutiy key library every so often. It should also generate a log (you'll have to search around for it, I don't remember it's location right off) that might have some information in it about what's going on, but I kinda doubt it.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#3]

Here is what I am seeing: in services there is the lfavlic service, it is set to automatic, it is not started. In the system event log I recieve a service control error indicating the lfavlic service terminated unexpectedly and no action was taken. There is an instance of the lfavlic process running when I look in task monitor, sometimes more than one. The lfavlic.log in commserver\fax indicates a license was created, as I look at it now it was created today. I am running Unity 2.4.6 102, lfmonitor shows the LF version as 6.5 build 136. Any ideas what outside influence might cause the service to croak? I did have some problems with the Gammalink driver that seemed to be related to it being on the same bus with a badly behaved RAID controller but that was the only other event error I am getting, now the event viewer is clean other than the lfavlic stopping. I am mostly concerened that the license won't be granted and we won't be faxing anymore. Thanks.




Anthony Duval
Systems Engineer
Special Order Systems
aduval@team-sos.com

[#4]

Boy, digging through the archives of my brain on this one. Lets see... there are likely multiple instances of lfavlic.exe in memory because the EXE version of it is still set to launch from the startup folder every time you log into the box. It's not smart enough to check for an instance of itself running already and will happily continue loading more copies. This doesn't hurt antyhing (i.e. licenses will continue to be generated every 24 hours) but it is kinda annoying. Check your startup folder for this reference to verify that.

Why the service itself is bailing out on you I'm not sure. Can you start the service manually or does it fail to start with one of those fab "windws internal error" notes? It could be a situation where the lfavlic service is coming up before the security key libraries are properly loaded on a restart (Unity fires these up as you bring up AvCsMGR) and it's bombing out since it can't read the secruity key or something. I don't remember this being a problem but it's possible. If you can start the service manually and it stays up (i.e. after Unity has started) we can probably figure out how to setup its dependencies such that it wont try to start until Unity is up and flying. In the case of Win2K this would be a matter of simply configuring the service to retry X times which would probably do it. In NT 4.0 it's a bit trikcier...

anyway, test to see if the service can start at all... also, try toasting all the EXE versions of lfAvLic and THEn trying to bring the service up... could be a conflict there but I doubt it.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)