I have renewed my licence, how can I make sure the expiry date has been extended?

Check via the licence portal

To check whether CCDC have extended the expiration date of your licence, log into the licence portal. If your licence has not been extended and you think it should have been, please check with your site contact on the status of your renewal, then contact us at admin@ccdc.cam.ac.uk if required.

To check whether your computer has picked up on the new expiration date, start Mercury and click Help > About Mercury. In the new window that appears, scroll down until you see your expiration date.

If you have a new key

We will issue a new licence key if your licence type or number of activations changes or if we believe the old key has been compromised.

• Customers using node-locked licensing will need to make sure that all computers running the CSD Portfolio have been reactivated with the new key in order to maintain access to CSD Portfolio software.
• The easiest way to reactivate is from the command line:
  ccdc_activator -a -k NEW-ACTIVATION-KEY
• Customers using a local licence server will also have been issued with a new licence server key and will need to reactivate their local licence server with this key.
• If you have set up the software to use a local licence server, the activation steps can be found here.
• More details on how to reactivate the software using the ccdc_activator tool can be found in the CSD Portfolio Release and Installation Notes.

If your old key has been extended

If you are connecting to a local licence server and the new expiry date has not registered, you will need to reactivate the server as described at Updating an existing local licence server after renewing your licence.

If you are using a node-locked activation key on a machine that is connected to the internet, there is very little required of you. If you believe that the expiration date should have been extended, close and restart Mercury. Your machine will sync with our license server and update your licence details if you have renewed your licence.

If you are unable to start Mercury because a message appears that your licence has expired, you will have to reactivate it using the ccdc_activator tool. If activation has been set up for all users, you can either manually reactivate for each user or delete their locally stored activation info to trigger a re-run of the automated silent activation. The location of the locally stored activation info depends on the operating system:

• Windows: In the Registry in HKCU\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\csetz
• Linux: ~/.local/share/data/bconf/data.conf
• MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/iConf/data.conf

If you have renewed your licence but your machine is not connected to the internet, then you will need to either connect to the internet and follow the steps above or perform an offline activation using the software activation tool to generate a request.

Information on accessing the latest release can be found here.

Note that it is important to check with your site contact on the renewal status first. If you have followed the steps above and still require assistance, do contact us at support@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.