Determining a Machine's HOST ID

Determining a Machine's HOST ID

All PTC FLEX-enabled products use the machine's network card Physical (or MAC) Address for license configuration purposes. This address is a unique, permanent ID affixed to all network cards and recognized on Ethernet based networks. PTC refers to this Physical Address as the hostID or PTC_HOSTID of the machine to be licenses whether for a floating FlexNet server license or a local locked license file.

The hostID can be recognized as a series of two digit hexadecimal characters. This will be a set of 6 on a Windows machines example: 00-1A-2B-3C-4D-55. While on Unix machines such as Sun Solaris this may be a set of four example: 10-10-56-78.

PTC software and License Management tools should recognize the hostID as obtained from any wired or wireless network card physically present in the workstation as a valid hostID. The hostID or PTC_HOSTID should be built off of the main "wired" network card on a system for best practices but can be built off any valid network card. A hostID as obtained from other network cards such as Firewire ports or virtual network cards should be seen as invalid by PTC License Management tools and therefore not be used.

This document outlines several options for determining the hostID of the machine used for licensing PTC software but the most reliable method of determining the hostID will be from using the PTC specific software.

Note:

A valid hostID on a Windows machine has historically begun with either 00 or 08. However it is becoming increasingly more common with newer machines that a hostID from a valid source may begin with some other combination of numbers which may be recognized as invalid by PTC License Management tools. An example of this might come from a newer wireless card. If this is the case please contact PTC License Management or PTC Technical Support for assistance.

Option 1: Download the PTC HOST_ID Utility

The most effective method of ensuring that a valid hostID is obtained for licensing PTC products is to use the downloadable PTC HostID Utility - cpu_id.exe. This utility is designed only to return valid hostID's from any system regardless of how many network interfaces it might have installed.

The cpu_id.exe utility is platform specific and the download for each of the currently supported platforms is available in the upper right-hand corner of this page. Please ensure that the correct version is downloaded for your specific platform.

This utility must be run from a command prompt in Windows or a terminal session on Unix.

1. Download the proper cpu_id utility for your platform and save to an easily accessible location.


2. Open a command prompt or terminal session, navigate to the location where the cpu_id utility was saved and run the utility.
   Windows users may have different options for navigating to the location of the cpu_id utility which may include drag and drop, otherwise you will need the full path to where the file was saved.


3. The output will be similar to the following:
   D:\ptc\cpu_id
   PTC HOSTID = 00-11-AA-BB-22-CC


4. This is the number needed for creating PTC license files.

Option 2: Using PTC.setup from the PTC Software Media.

For Unix:

• Mount the PTC software CD or DVD, as defined in the Installation Guide then run setup
• Run setup from the root directory of the downloaded installation files.

The HostID will be displayed on the first screen of the setup utility in the lower, left-hand corner.

For Windows:

• Insert the Pro/ENGINEER CD or DVD, the autorun feature should start PTC.Setup automatically.
• If the utility does not automatically start select Start > Run, then enter: <drive_letter>:\setup (example: e:\setup.exe).
• Alternatively Windows Explorer can be used to browse and then run setup.exe from the media drive or downloaded installation files.

The HostID will be displayed on the first screen of the setup utility in the lower, left-hand corner.

Option 3: Using Machine Specific Network Commands

This option should be used only if access to either of the utilities mentioned above is unavailable or possibly if using older PTC software. Although these commands will correctly determine a machine's hostID, the information from the command may require interpretation adding potential communication problems in correctly licensing the software.

SUN:

The "hostid" command provides the following results:

Machine name: user [2] hostid
808a30d2

where the hostID = 80-8A-30-D2.

Windows:

The "ipconfig /all" command provides the following results:

C:\WINNT\system32>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : JSMITH
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : xxx.ptc.com
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : xxx.ptc.com
                                                      ptc.com

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : xxx.ptc.com
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/1000 MTW Network Connection #2
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-11-AA-BB-22-CC
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
                                                xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Secondary WINS Server . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
 

For the "ipconfig /all" command, the hostID corresponds to the Physical Address which is 00-11-AA-BB-22-CC in this example.

Important Note: If this is the only method available for determining the PTC HostID additional support may be required to allow PTC Software to run successfully. Please contact PTC Technical Support in these cases.