We have been using Virtualmin for a very long time. We have a primary hosting server, plus we have another VPS at another provider and all it does is Slave DNS.
When I set everything up long ago, I was advised that I could just use another Virtualmin system using the same license since I wasn’t (still not) hosting any virtual servers on that second server. Further, Virtualmin knows where the virtual servers are and how many.
Now we started getting this error:
**A problem was detected with your Virtualmin license:**
Your serial number XXXXXXX is licensed for only 1 server, but it is currently being used on 2 servers.
What should I do to correct the license error? Switch the slave DNS installation to GPL? How?
A secondary DNS server only needs Webmin, it doesn’t need Virtualmin. But, Virtualmin GPL would also work fine and it can be converted with the virtualmin downgrade-license command:
The license server check for active installations doesn’t try to work out whether the system has Virtual Servers, it just checks the number of unique system IDs. But, it’s no big deal, since it’s not being used for Virtual Servers, it’s simple/harmless to downgrade it to GPL and forget about it. The warning will clear on its own in a couple of days.
Yeah this one has me a little like WHAT??/ after all of the time I have been a Virtualmin Pro subscriber except I was advised that I could use a second installation as a a fully functional sandbox with the same license as my primary purchase. Virtualmin has not complained for this entire time until you get above 2 above your license. What gives guys? Changing policy here and not giving anyone a grandfather?? I’m VERY disappointed.
Yeah, Ilia’s been refactoring and improving the license manager on the website and for our monitoring of usage data, but I don’t think there’s been clarity in those changes about what we have allowed in the past and what we ought to allow, and how we ought to communicate that. And, Ilia might not even know what I used to say about development/backup license use. We didn’t discuss it while we he was developing the new features.
One of the things we found when Ilia improved our reporting is that a lot of folks are using multiple servers with the same license (beyond just two) and ignoring the gentle warnings and such. We used to just spot check things and I’d manually poke around in the database now and then to look for big license abuse. So, I think he’s gotten more insistent about server counts and maybe it’s gone too far (and beyond what I’ve said in the past was OK).
I’ll talk it over with him and see if maybe we can go back to ignoring a second server if it’s either got 0 domains or the same domains as the other server. I don’t know how to really achieve that, though, as we don’t gather that kind of data and we don’t really want to collect a lot of data about our customers (what we don’t collect we can’t leak). I don’t know how to balance all that with Ilia’s reasonable desire to make sure we’re getting paid for what folks are using (we give away so much already, it sucks to have someone decide they want to use Pro features on a bunch of servers but only pay for it on one).
Honestly, we’re not trying to be annoying, and I’d like to do as much as we can to make Virtualmin low-hassle/low-annoyance, especially for development tasks. We’re just trying to make this a sustainable business. I know we’ve been around for a long time, and it can seem like it’s working fine. But, honestly, it never has made enough to be a sustainable business. Without me and Jamie volunteering most of the time, and Ilia working for cheap, it wouldn’t exist because it simply doesn’t have the budget to exist without a lot of volunteer labor.
Why don’t you start cracking down on the licence abuse?
For migration and testing purposes allow running two *min pro instances in parallel for one week tops. Shoot a daily reminder into their dashboards and either deactivate the second instance on day 8 or downgrade to GPL.
Everybody has to earn their fair share for the work they’re doing, why would you do different?
That’s what this thread is about. That’s what I’m saying has already happened. And, it has the unintended (at least, I wouldn’t intend it) consequence of making some uses that used to be OK no longer OK, and that’s why users are annoyed at us.
Start enforcing it. This “free-of-charge because it’s open-source” spirit has to go away. People need to understand they have to pay for the services they’re using. It’s okay you tolerated this behaviour so far (though I don’t really understand why) but to keep *min alive, you have to radically change your mindset, otherwise this fantastic panel ends up in the virtual “we had faith in people but they disappointed us and we did do nothing about and now we have to shut down business” cemetery.
I don’t know if I am a typical user but I have 2 virtualmin servers. 1 is an active one which has clients on it and then the other server I use for testing and bug reporting. I will not do testing and bug reporting on my live server for obvious reasons.
If you are using a Virtualmin for live services and it needs Pro features then it should be paid for. License abuse is unfair to the developers and to those who pay.
If there is a way I can keep my second Pro for testing/sandbox as I do now, that would be great.
Not sure if I’m lost in translation here, hence beg my pardon if I misunderstood…
I interpret your response as hypocritically:
You asked for people paying the second licence but want to keep yours for free?! If you ask for an exception, others will do as well. So the devs end up in the same mess as they’re already caught in.
I use the Pro features on my live virtualmin server and pay for a license for it
Virtualmin has a lot of bugs so I need a second server to be able to mess with, test things and report. If I only have a GPL version I cannot give feedback on the Pro features.
I need a second Virtualmin server which is the same as my live server to be able to test commands and actions before performing them on the live server. A sandbox?
My second virtualmin server is only accessible locally. It is behind a NAT.
You can only run one live virtualmin server per IP anyway.
Are these real bugs or just you wanting Virtualmin to clone the abilities of other control panels ? So far with the latest version of Virtualmin (7.30.2) I have not found a bug that stops it’s day to day usage. could you please list this list of bugs so we could all be aware of them ?
As far as I see it one server = one Licence where it is used for hosting domains or not so in your case you should have 2 licences assuming you wish to pro on your development server , with the caveat at the developers discretion, they issue you a free licence in order to continue with your ‘bug’ collection services. I just don’t get why you don’t want to pay a second licence fee, if you want to use a second server. In my use case I can not fit a single domain (with it’s sub servers) into a standard licence, at one point I had 2 licences and spread the ‘sub servers’ across two installations which was not really practicable so today I now pay for 1 licence and don’t use it as everything is now gpl
So what? Pay for it. Done and dusted. I contributed too but that doesn’t enable me for a discount. This is not how this open-source community thingy works.
I have a pro and use GPL for testing. If, for whatever reason I’d need a second pro, I’d spin it up for two days tops and do my stuff. Quick and easy with a backup in hand that can be played back in a split second.
So you run a second Pro Virtualmin, is this on a paid license? or are you downloading a new copy each time (using bandwidth) to use the 30 days grace period?
