License limit exceeded or System is overloaded **MASTER RECORD**

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 17.01

Description:
Users get the message "License Limit Exceeded" or "System is overloaded, try again" in the PC client or in the Web.

(On the pc you may see "Remote Service error C1015 88 - License limit exceeded" or "Remote Service 9 Error".)

Or you see messages about license limit exceeded in the www_server, pc_server, oclc_server, or z39 server log.

Resolution:
These messages indicate that there are more users than the license limit.

pc_server sessions remain active for 10 minutes after the time of their last activity. (This is hard-coded in the programs.) (Web sessions remain active for 2 minutes.) (This applies to all ALEPH versions, from 12.4-up.)

If a user has multiple GUI modules open at the same time, they are counted as only one pc_server session.

You can see the license itself as the file "license" in the ./alephe/tab directory. This file shows how many licensed users there are for each kind of server. There can be values for: MAX-WEB-USERS, MAX-GUI-USERS, MAX-Z39-USERS, MAX-SC-USERS (self-check), MAX-NO-LIBS, MAX-DOC-NUMBER, OCLC, and SFX.

If you feel that these values are not correct for your site, contact Ex Libris Support.

The servers' log files (in $LOGDIR/pc_server_65n5.log) have messages like this:

Licensed users: 00000 0050
Active users : 000000051

To diagnose the problem:

1. Do util y/11. This will give you the current number of active users for each server. If you feel that the number for the problem server could be correct, then contact Ex Libris Support to have us increase the number on your license.

2. If you feel that the number could not be correct (there couldn't be that many actual users), then "dlib vir01"; and

.. a. if the server is the www_server, do util a/17/14 for z63.
.. b. if the server is the pc_server, do util a/17/14 for z65.

Does the z63_id / z65_id show as "valid unique"? If not, then consult Article 000038483 ("GUI 'License limit exceeded'").

3. If the z63 or z65 is OK, then it may be that some other computer is creating multiple sessions on your server. To determine where the sessions are coming from and prevent them, consult Article 000037564 ("Users connected to server; 'License limit exceeded'").

4. In one case: the repeated address was one of their servers, used for web statistics, which was hitting the web server without their realizing it.

5. Another cause of repeated, multiple sessions (in the www_server) can be spiders/robots. You may be able to identify and exclude them by address based on Article 000037564 ("Users connected to server; 'License limit exceeded'"). Or, placing a two-line robots.txt file in your server's $alephe_root/apache/htdocs/ directory should also prevent this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Note: PC Server timeout or www_session timeout is a separate issue. Those free up resources but do not affect the z65 or z63 sessions. (See PRB 764 and the discussion of "PC Server Time-Out" in section 6.4.4 of the ALEPH System Administration manual.)