Purify is a very useful tool throughout the software development lifecycle. Developers can use it to ensure that the new code that they have written is not going to inadvertently cause any memory corruption errors or leaks. It includes capabilities like:

1. Memory debugging- pinpoints hard to find memory errors such as un-initialized memory access, buffer overflow and improper freeing of memory,
2. Memory leak detection- identifies memory blocks that no longer have a valid pointer. Purify is supported on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and AIX,
3. Performance profiling- highlights application performance bottlenecks and improves application understanding with a graphical representation of function calls, and
4. Code coverage- identifies untested code with line-level precision.

Now, by looking at this crisp description some of us would really want to try this software, its functionality, and capabilities Below is the link for those who have a feeling that this would be of great help to his/her organisation and can help developers in many ways.
Evaluate the Product and share your thoughts- Rational PurifyPlus: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/rpp/

In order to use and evaluate the product, or even in your production environment, to run any rational product you would need a license file which will be the key to success. In simple words, to run this dynamic software analysis tool we need a license, the license could be of your choice, for the type of license please see the earlier blog post: Licenses types and their functionality

By using the license file and the setup in order to serve the license we can launch the product. This seems to be easy and yes it is, if we do not consider external factors like network, correct license file, server settings, client settings etc, which is not possible, and we run into issues. These issues are simple if we do things right the first time and do it right all the time.

There would be many instances where you have thought that when everything is in place and we have valid licenses which are imported using the license server as recommended, then what could be the possible cause of the error?

Considering the fact that everything is done correctly and there is a very little room for error, I have done some research on it, and here are my findings: Errors specifically (licensing errors) related to PurifyPlus revolve around few settings. I will talk about them one by one in detail in order to get clear picture of what can be done to eliminate these kind of errors and save time,

One among the most common error is FLEXnet Licensing error:-18,147, License checkout failure while using Purify, Quantify or PureCoverage components of DevelopmentStudio UNIX,
Full Error will be like : Purify engine: Error: License checkout failure: License server does not support this feature, FLEXlm error: -18,147.

There could be couple or reasons for this specific error to occur:

1). First among them is due to the environment settings not being configured correctly. Confirm the following environment settings are set as shown:

RSU_LICENSE_MAP=//config/License_Map
LM_LICENSE_FILE=@

If your configuration differs from the above, you can manually set the above settings by doing:
setenv RSU_LICENSE_MAP //config/License_Map
setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE @

You can now test the license by using the option -testlicense : %purify -testlicense

If you are still getting license errors, copy the License_Map file to the .Rational directory under the user's home directory
%cp /config/License_Map /$HOME/.Rational/ And test the license once again.

If this does not resolve the error we should move on to the second possibility which could cause tis error:

2 ). It is possible to set up a mixed environment where the same license server manages licenses for both a suite product and individual point products.

In this situation, license usage order can be customized by modifying the settings in the License_Map file on a per-component-product basis. For example, when a user starts an application, such as IBM Rational Rose, you can define whether that user claims a Rational Rose license or a Rational Suite license.

Fore more details on How to configure a Rational license for a UNIX system using the license map file, Please see the following link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21120664

3). Now that we have done all other checks and made sure that the License Usage is correctly set and environment variables are fine, you may still find that whenever an attempt is made to launch IBM Rational PurifyPlus it results in the error “FLEXnet Licensing error:-18,147”, or specifically for a Windows server "Unable to connect to your license server" (please note this is only applicable when the License server is Windows Server and client is a UNIX machine).

The issue could be with the incorrect license file in use, which means that Rational PurifyPlus for Windows Authorized User license key has been imported.

This issue may happen when Rational PurifyPlus for Microsoft Windows has been generated, Let me explain...
See the license keys below:
License key name
IBM Rational PurifyPlus for Linux Floating License Key
IBM Rational PurifyPlus for Linux and UNIX Floating License Key
IBM Rational PurifyPlus for Windows Floating License Key

If you have a Windows license server and a LINUX or UNIX client then the license key needs to be generated should be : "IBM Rational PurifyPlus for Linux and UNIX Floating License Key"
If you have a Windows license server and a Windows client then the license you would need should be: "IBM Rational PurifyPlus for Windows Floating License Key"

The error “ FLEXnet Licensing error:-18,147” should no longer persist, if we have these things in place. Also, these should be followed as the best practice while using the software in order to minimize these kind of errors and increase performance and durability of the product we ( IBM ) is developing for you.

Related Links:
Launch of Rational PurifyPlus on Windows Server 2008 result in license error:
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21591482

Installing Rational PurifyPlus result in Flexlm -15 error :
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21587202

Launch of Rational PurifyPlus on Windows 7 results in license error :
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21595509

License Usage Mapper does not retain settings :
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21263952

image credit: (cc) Some rights reserved by Phil and Pam
 

Author: Saurabh Tyagi